Absence of incentives, poor awareness hobble rural WiFi scheme PM-WANI

Scheme central to government's plans to create up to 10 mn public WiFi hotspots by Dec

Nearly two years after it was launched, the government has been able to activate 132,000 hotspots as part of the Prime Minister’s WiFi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI). The scheme is central to the government’s plans to create up to 10 million public WiFi hotspots in India by the end of this year.

However, lack of interest in many areas, primarily due to low financial incentives, has contributed to the hesitancy in adopting the scheme, say officials apprised of the situation.

On the other hand, the sluggish pace of migrating WiFi hotspots to the PM-WANI network by state-run entities, such as