ISP’s To Offer Wi-Fi Services To Residential Homes!
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The internet is soon to take up the space of what television holds today for the common man in India. Very soon, ISP’s are going to start offering Wi-Fi services to residential homes. If these services are offered at cheaper prices to residential homes, it might even lead to the internet taking the space of television. In fact, as the introduction of Wi-Fi along with the launch of IPTV reaches the lower scale of masses on a large scale all over India, it will be interesting to see the situation thereafter.
Umesh Naik, CEO - Anar Softcom says:
“The new housing set-ups like apartments, cooperative groups have started preferring wireless technology over cables. Though the cost largely depends upon the distance, size and location of your house, wi-fi connectivity can be acquired at as low as Rs 1,500. For bigger set-ups like housing colonies, the cost may be a little over 10% as compared to Internet cable connection. But in the long run, it works out to be cheaper,”
Looking at current trends, there is no doubt that Wi Fi has the potential to be cheaper than the usual combination of fiber optic and CAT 5 cables when the distances are longer and the number of users are higher. Thus from a very practical standpoint – Wi fi has better economies of scale.
This is because of:
- Fewer points of manageability. Wi fi is basically the conversion of data packets into wireless data packets. Thus for 100 users, one does not need to have 100 wires going out from a switch; the provider can simply have a Wi Fi radio having the same amount of bandwidth servicing the same amount of users – except that the physical cost of wires is saved.
- Thus hardware problems, if arise in any case will arise from one source only except if the users laptop has a problem.
The LAN created within a premise can have obvious benefits to users:
- Plug n Play Wireless Cameras can be inserted to enhance security again saving on the initial cost of wiring
- Once VoIP becomes legal – the LAN over Wireless (WLAN), which supports high speed data transfers, can also be used to have video conferencing within the premises of the WLAN
- The biggest advantage is that a Network Attached Storage can be attached to a WLAN which can possibly accessed by all the users within the WLAN enabling data sharing etc. Thus if there are popular movies, TV shows, music etc that needs to be shared, then they can all be downloaded onto computers from an individual source which does not utilize bandwidth and also has higher transfer speeds. It’s thus a saving of both time and money. Imagine, 100 different people downloading the same show at the same time using the internet putting a strain on overall speed).
The pitfalls of WiFi are that the frequency of Wi Fi radio waves are quite high and thus this does not facilitate easy penetration across walls and this can be a problem because additional boosters in the customer premises may need to be installed – which would have an additional cost (a first time cost that consumers are often not willing to pay because the CAT 5 option becomes cheaper). Presently such Wi Fi equipment is pretty expensive (which is why most ISPs are not still ready to completely let go of their physical investments in CAT 5 and optical fiber and switch to WiFi) but with time the costs would reduce facilitating easy availability of WiFi.
Looking to the future, one will definitely see more Wireless LANs even in middle income households especially since laptop consumption is beginning to overtake PC consumption and I also see creation of WiFi hotspots across cities where ISPs may tie up with restaurant, shopping chains etc and let users take their home internet connections outdoor as well. Installation of Wi-Fi networks on a large scale will enable large scale telephony, data exchange and encourage large volumes of business across the country.
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First these ISPS should offer broadband at atleast 1 mbps at an affordable rate , current indian Broadband and their rate sucks
Hello Sarathy,
Thank you for commenting on WATBlog.
We highly appreciate your comments on our blog.
I understand that you are concerned about internet connectivity and its prices as of now but as soon as wi-fi services becomes available to residential homes, I think the prices of the ISP’s for 1 mbps will probably be lower than what they are today as the competition will begin fiercely because the infrastructure would already be established by then and ISP’s would like to capture the market as much as possible.
At the end of the day, there will be more choices available by each-and-every passing day.
Lets hope that things work out good for us.
Regards,
Ronak Shah.
WATConsultant.
WiFi is a good thing to happen. but whether the cost benefit of the same will be passed on to the end customer is a big question.
Broadband in most parts of India is still oligopolistic with most of it controlled by in-efficient state owned bodies. From their current tarrifs it doesnt seem that they are in a mood to provide cheaper service. They may say 299Rs a Month, but for that yuo have a very low data transfer ceiling too! One movie, and thats exhausted.
I thought Wi-fi is an old story
Isn’t Wi-max the in thingy?