Wi-Fi remains patchy at busy spots in Hyderabad

HYDERABAD: The Hy-Fi project, under which the entire city of Hyderabad will be Wi-Fi enabled, is having teething troubles. People are unable to connect to the internet at certain locations, while net connectivity works as expected at others. According to officials, Wi-Fi access points have so far been set up at 570 locations across the state capital, including bus stations, tourist and heritage spots, public parks, government and corporate hospitals, police stations, and government schools. 

One of the access point locations is Jubilee bus station, which experiences an average footfall of 35,000 passengers per day. However, people are having trouble using the wireless services at this location. A source from the bus station said, “Passengers waiting for buses are asking us why the Wi-Fi service is not working when they try to log in. We say that there are technical problems. It’s been like this for over a month now.” J. Ratnaker, a passenger who was waiting for a bus to Karimnagar, said that he had been trying to access the internet through his smartphone, but he was unable to connect to the Wi-Fi.

Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi connection at the GHMC office in Malkajgiri was found to be working well and providing a good download speed. Officials from the IT department said that they had received feedback regarding dissatisfactory service at Necklace road, Lumbini park, and Jubilee bus station, where BSNL had been assigned the task of setting up wireless connections. They said that they were working towards overcoming the problems being faced at nearly 70 locations across the city.

“We have decided to give another service provider the opportunity to set up connections at places with high footfall so that if one of the connections is not working, people can log in to the other,” an official said. The Hy-Fi project was taken up by the State government two years ago, as part of its digital Telangana initiative. A pilot project was initially conducted at 100 locations across Hyderabad. 

The project was revived two months ago, on June 20, on the occasion of World Wi-Fi Day, with the target of providing Wi-Fi connections at 3,000 locations in the city. After finalising locations for the setup access points, the authorities assigned the task to service providers such as Act Fiber, Airtel, BSNL and Indus Towers.