Public WiFi hotspots in India to reach 21 lakh by 2021: DigiAnalysis

Public WiFi hotspots in the country are expected to see sevenfold jump to 21 lakh by 2021, according to estimates prepared by digital media platform DigiAnalysis.

The firm estimates that the total number of WiFi hotpsots in the country stands at around 3.06 lakh currently, with state-owned Bharat Broadband Network Ltd (BBNL) owning over 2.2 lakh units.

"India's public WiFi hotspots numbers will witness sevenfold jump in the next 2 years from 0.3 million in 2019 to 2.1 million in 2021 thanks to the government schemes both central and state," DigiAnalysys said in a statement on Thursday.

Telecom operators have promised the government to install 10 lakh WiFi hotspots by December this year.

According to estimates shared by DigiAnalysis, after BBNL, BSNL tops the chart with 49,300 WiFi hotspots. It is followed by Reliance Jio with 6,500 hotspots, QuadGen Wireless 6,000, Smart Cities 5,000, RailTel 1,618, Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel 1,000 each, L&T SW&C 800 and 15,000 other WiFi hotspots.

"India has already achieved 3,06,918 WiFi hotspots and is strongly poised to achieve 2.1 million by 2021," DigiAnalysys Director Pravin Prashant said.

He also said the jump is expected mainly on the back of strong push by the government through BBNL BharatNet project, RailTel through railway stations, Ministry of Urban Development through smart cities project and MHRD (Ministry of Human Resource Department) through colleges in the country