Bihar Govt to Offer Free WiFi in Colleges & Universities, But Will Block Websites with Pornographic Content!

If you didn’t know this yet, Bihar has the longest free WiFi zone in the world and the Government has plans to launch free WiFi services in the state to improve the quality of life and offer its residents access to internet.

The railway stations in Patna also have free WiFi services, thanks to Railtel-Google initiative. However, according to reports a few months back, porn was the most searched item on the free WiFi facility, which was not the objective of free internet.

Now, the Government plans to launch free WiFi internet service in colleges and universities in the state, however with a caution this time. This free service will have all the porn websites and content blocked, so that the students use it for educational purposes.

When the reports were outed by Railtel, YouTube and Google searches were far lesser than porn, which is what surprised Patna authorities. This time they are more careful considering WiFi is being made available to students.

By February 2017, over 300 colleges and 9 universities will see this internet service being implemented. “We have decided to block all pornography and other undesirable sites to enable the service for educational purpose only on the campuses of educational institutions,” Bihar State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd (Beltron), Patna Managing Director Rahul Singh told PTI officials.

What other restrictions will free WiFi have?

Apart from the blockage of porn websites and ‘undesirable content’, Bihar authorities will also limit the usage of free WiFi, so that every students is able to access it. The Government will also offer 10MBPS of speed to every college and university, except IIT which will get 20MBPS.

The Government has not yet put any restriction on websites like Hotstar, Netflix and Voot which can also be misused by the students to watch content that might not get blocked. YouTube cannot be blocked because it hosts all kinds of topics and categories of videos.

Bihar Government is also more concerned about spreading education through free WiFi. In an ideal case, all students would be adhering to the vision by the Government, but we all know that students will never listen to others, and there will always be people who misuse it.

Will the Government be able to restrict pornographic content?

If the Government wants to actually block all such content, then it must also block the source of such content. For example. Porn can be accessed through proxy websites, torrents and other illegit sources that offer the same content.

Secondly, hackers are much much smarter than these Government authorities and can hack into their systems to deface them. They can also find ways to bypass these restrictions and access such content. Students are the strongest rebels in the country, and can go to any extent to do what they want.

If the Government truly wants to implement these and launch free WiFi in colleges, then it must think through it, before going ahead with the official launch. Accessing porn on free internet that has been given for educational purpose will never serve the purpose if the implementation is not thought of properly.