Google’s Public WiFi Plans Will Boost GDP By $20 Billion; Create 40 Mn New Internet Users!

After Google and Railtel’s WiFi services at railway stations proved to be a blockbuster hit, there are some exciting new plans related with public Wifi in India.

As per a recent report commissioned by Google, new WiFi hotspots across India has create 40 million or 4 crore new users of Internet, all over the country.

But that’s not all – If more WiFi hotspots are installed, then it can boost our economy by $20 billion or Rs 1.36 lakh crore!

What exactly are Google’s plans here?

Google’s New WiFi Vision To Cover Entire India

Google has now decided to go beyond railway station, when it comes to WiFi installations.

As per a Google sponsored report titled: ‘Accelerating connectivity through public WiFi: Early lessons from the railway WiFi project’ by Analysys Mason, expanding and increasing WiFi hotspots across India can prove to be a tremendous boost for economy.

In short, the logic is:

1: New users join the Internet bandwagon, triggering more usage of the Internet

2: 40 Million new Internet users can come on-board

3: Atleast 100 million new smartphone users will be born, inspired by free WiFi

4: These 100 million new smartphone users can infuse $2-3 billion into the GDP, as they purchase new, fancier smartphones

5: Overall, India’s GDP can get a boost of $20 billion due to more Internet users in India.

To achieve this, Google will support Govt.’s plan in this regard, under National Digital Communications Policy: 5 million new access points by 2020 and 10 million by 2022.

Google is planning to collaborate and partner with various Internet service providers and organizations to make it happen.

Google India’s Director at Next Billion Users said, “This is just the beginning of a journey that will change India’s access story and the Analysys Mason Report outlines some very important insights that can enable ISPs and TSPs to think in this direction.”

Railtel-Google’s Fruitful Partnership

The base and foundation of this utopian vision related with WiFi stems from Google and Railtel’s fruitful partnership in introducing the concept of free WiFi at railway stations.

Earlier this month, Google successfully installed Railtel’s free WiFi across 400 railway stations, which completed the first stage of their mission.

Named as Google Station, this concept proved to be a major hit, as 80 lakh Indians are right now using free Internet across these 400 railway stations.

While a typical Jio user consumes 560 MB of data per day, Railtel-Google Wifi user at railway stations use 300 MB of data, per day, and in a monthm 50% of these users are first time users. In fact, as per the report, 1.5% of all Internet users daily are new users, anywhere in India.

India is lagging behind in the number of commercial WiFi hotspots: Compared to 61 lakh WiFi hotspots in China, India has only 36,000 commercial hotspots. Even countries like Mexico and Indonesia have more than 1.6 lakh such hotspots.

Can Google’s WiFi vision trigger a revolution in India?