Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Published on : Voice & Data Connect

Data Infosys Ltd (DIL) recently signed an MoU with Department of IT & Communication to turn Jaipur city into a Wi-Fi enabled city. An elated Dr Ajay Data, CEO, DIL shared his experience and future plans on being a part of the dream project of Vasundhara Raje, CM, Rajasthan on making Jaipur a Wi-fi city with Syeda Beenish Khalid of Voice&Data ConnecT

Brief us about the MoU signed to make Jaipur a Wi-Fi city.

Department of IT and Communication (DoIT&C), on behalf of Rajasthan Government has signed an MoU with us for developing and deploying Wi-Fi hotspots at different locations in Jaipur city. This would form a strategic backbone infrastructure to the growing competitive IT investment and the digital revolution, taking place in the city.

The Wi-Fi network shall be deployed by DIL out of its own resources, based on build, operate and manage (BOM) model. We would incur all the costs towards survey, study, procuring necessary equipment/resources, commissioning and installing them for operation.

What is the timeframe and the cost of the entire project?

The entire project will be deployed in two phases. In the first phase, the locations outside the Jaipur old wall city would be converted into hotspots. In phase two, the Wall City area will be covered.

The time frame to complete the first phase is six months. The estimated cost involved in the rollout of this project is approximately Rs 8-10 crore. The products, which would be used, are wireless access points, antennas, bandwidth, lease lines, routers, modems, etc.

What all challenges are you facing in making the city Wi-Fi? Would you handle the project single handedly?

We are not involving any networking partners, as we have a great in-house team to handle this assignment single handedly. About challenges, I would like to say that we have clear mindset for every project. We believe in 3P approach—‘no problem is permanent’, ‘no problem is perceive’ and ‘no problem is personnel’. In this project, the most important challenge is that government has not invested in this project, entire investment whatsoever would be taken care of by us only. Though it needs a great capital to be invested and other operational cost, but we are ready for it.

Jaipur bus stand has been turned Wi-Fi. How much time did it take and how difficult was it?

We just took five days after getting the permission from RSRTC (Rajasthan State Road Transport Corp) to convert the Jaipur bus stand into a Wi-Fi hotspot. It was not at all difficult for our team to roll this out.