Telecom operator Vodafone India has entered into a collaboration with the Indian Railways, to set up free WiFi zone at Ahmedabad’s railway station in Kalupur. According to the company, anyone will be able to avail the WiFi services irrespective of their telecom operator. The free WiFi will be free for up to 20 minutes of ‘uninterrupted’ usage or 100MB data, whichever comes first. The user can reconnect for free usage every 24 hours. Note that it's not clear what Vodafone means by uninterrupted; will the user’s 20 minutes of time be reset if he/she disconnects in 19 minutes? Furthermore, it's not clear if users can pay for more WiFi usage, and if so, how and how much. We have written to Vodafone asking about these issues and will update the story accordingly. The public Wifi space has been really picking up steam in India, although questions over security and privacy remain. The rising interest in public WiFi is helped by the fact that mobile data charges keep getting higher while smartphone adoption is at an all time high. Other public Wifi initiatives undertaken in India: - In July, Amazon offered free WiFi internet with unlimited usage across select bus stops in Hyderabad, Pune and Chennai, as a temporary campaign. – In June, Airtel won the mandate for the launch of Wi-Fi services in Gurgaon from the Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG). – The same month, state-run telecom operator BSNL tied up with the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to provide…
