India to have One million WANI compliant PDOs by 2019

By 2022 every Indian to have access to 50Mbps+ broadband

Published in

REDACT

8 min readJun 7, 2018

India will soon have a million WANI (WiFi Access Network Interface) compliant PDOs (Public Data Offices).

A single interoperable platform that will enable the delivery of data and WiFi services to all Indians is the heart of India’s new Digital Communications Policy (2018–2022) that is set to be unveiled shortly. A policy change is expected which will allow the reselling of data without an ISP license. Small businesses will be encouraged to become PDOs through a simple self-registration process as opposed to licensing.

TRAI WANI compliant routers from XiFi Networks, AirJaldi, WiFi Dabba , i2e1 and CDOT

Over 600 hotspots are currently live under the WANI pilot, initiated in July 2017.

Omnia Information (i2e1), WiFi Dabba, Cotyledon Technologies, Febler Technologies(Yspot), Xi-Fi Networks, Airjaldi Networks (Facebook’s rural broadband partner), OneHop Network, CSC-e Governance Services are some of the companies that participated in the pilot programme for interoperable WiFi hotspots across India.

Wifire, PayTM, Linq and C-DOT have created WANI enabled mobile apps for consumers.

“The objective is to ensure that by 2022, there is no Indian who does not have access to broadband. Not just broadband, but substantive broadband — 50 Mbps of broadband, so that it will enable them to access the development and livelihood interventions that each of them requires,” said Aruna Sundararajan, Secretary DOT, Ministry of Communications. “We believe that this is as important a platform as Aadhaar, UPI and BHIM and we believe that this is going to be one of the primary game changers in making sure that every single Indian has access.”

The chief architect of Aadhaar, Pramod Varma is also the chief architect of WANI.

“Architecting an interoperable population-scale system requires significant thinking so that we don’t have to keep changing. We did take that time and go through the pilot(phase),” said Pramod Varma, CTO — Ekstep.

“Connectivity is like a human right in a digital society”

Urging the PDO aggregators to make the process easy for users as well as providers, he said that the ability to offer a fully-managed WANI-in-a-box is a super critical element. “WANI is a set of protocols and policies and certification guidelines that tells you how you can all talk to each other in a compliant fashion, without having a central system. It’s like SMTP. SMTP allowed you to send mail from Gmail to Hotmail to everybody else,” he added.

According to RS Sharma, Chairman of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the idea for WANI was inspired by UPI and conceptualised during a discussion with Nandan Nilekani and Pramod Varma in Bangalore. “Why can’t we have a UPI like structure into WiFi, which means that everything should connect to everything else. And therefore this entire architecture is is based on the principle that everything should be connected,” he said.

Though India accounts for a sixth of the world population, it has just 0.1 percent of global public WiFi hotspots.

A report by CISCO indicated that the total number of public WiFi hotspots globally would grow six fold from 94 million in 2016 to 541.6 million in 2021.

110,700 villages have been connected under the Bharatnet programme of the Government with 277,761 km of OFC (Optical Fibre Cable). WANI data is expected to be cheaper than mobile data since it can work off a wired backhaul (no spectrum or expensive infrastructure costs). This will also create a robust fallback for failing or underperforming mobile networks.

Light Touch Regulation

“The TRAI had given a set of recommendations so that this is very, very light touch regulation, that it is there are no entry barriers to anybody onboarding this platform. We have gone strictly by the recommendation made by TRAI, because we all recognize that if we really want to have millions of public Wi Fi hotspots and large numbers of small businesses, large numbers of application providers. If we want them to onboard this platform then it has to be very, very light touch regulation,” said Aruna Sundararajan.

A new National Frequency Allocation Plan and 5G Roadmap are also expected to be launched soon.

Net Neutrality, M2M and cloud will be brought up in the very next meeting of the telecom commission and these will also become part of the policy. “In-flight connectivity, fixed-line proliferation, net-neutrality, m2m, cloud on all these I think we have received a set of recommendations from TRAI, which if implemented will see that India is indeed a global digital leader,” she added.

Job creation potential

“The main objective of this, apart from creating connectivity, and access for all is also job creation. In the new policy, the government has outlined the vision of creating 4 million additional jobs in the telecom sector. And when we look at the kind of potential that WANI platform and the public data office and data office aggregator concepts alone represent, I think we can, indeed unleash huge employment potential, if we are able to put in place this architecture and make it available for people across the country,” she added.

Six fold increase in Telecom Infrastructure Spend

“Against a total spend of INR 9900 crores on telecom infrastructure and services between 2009 and 2014, our planned and actual expenditure from 2014 to 2018 is INR 66,000 crores. This denotes a six fold increase in the investment,”said Manoj Sinha, Minister of State (Independent Charge)Ministry of Communications. “In the last four years we have added more than 266 million mobile connections and nearly 190 million internet connection in the country. The overall tele-density increased from 75 percent in June 2014 to 93 percent in March 2018.”

“In the last three years, under the new government, I think some of the biggest reforms and growth oriented set of policies for the telecom sector ever have been launched, as a result of which we have seen a doubling of infrastructure in just these last few years, both on the optic fiber side and on the towers. Similarly, we have had 500% growth in data. India has gone from being 155th in the world to number one in terms of mobile data consumption,” said Aruna Sundararajan. “The largest number of new schemes and programs to connect unconnected areas whether it is a comprehensive program for the north east, the LWE (Left Wing Extremism) areas. The first project was launched and completed, whereby about 3000 locations in the LWE areas have been given connectivity for the first time. The second phase of that was just approved last week by the cabinet. We expect that another 4000 locations will get covered. The Andaman Nicobar optic-fiber project is just about to commence,” she added.

WANI Architecture

As presented by Pramod Varma, CTO — Ekstep on 7th June 2018 in Bangalore.

Public Open WiFi framework — Architecture and Specification (Version 0.5)

KYC Made Simpler

Users do one time KYC within WANI enabled application
KYC for public Internet access as per regulation
Whenever WANI enabled application discovers and connects (with user consent) to a WANI compliant hotspot, application automatically sends a “digitally signed” authentication token
PDO/PDOAs do not have to do repeated KYC since they get auditable “digitally signed” token from WANI enabled app
Consumers get single-click connection experience
When audit is required, token can be uniquely mapped to a KYC user making it strongly traceable in case of incidents

Discovery Made Simpler

App allows users to discover nearby WANI compliant Access Points by detecting nearby SSIDs and verifying the MAC-IDs against the Registry.
Optionally user App can provide location specific searches and allow users to discover “nearby” WiFi hotspots without being the range.
App can allow features such as “favorites”, “most recent”, etc. for easy selection of regular connections.
App providers can offer value added services such as availability, average speed, customer rating, etc.

Usage Made Simpler

Providers

Any entity can become PDO Aggregator and then Sign up any SME/entity as PDOs within their network
Simple Signup and onboarding into digital registry
Free to offer free and paid services with open pricing model
Can use any WANI software/hardware stack and can sign up with any Payment Gateway to collect payments

Users

Users can choose any WANI enabled application
Users do one time KYC and setup profile and preferred payment method etc,
Users can add multiple devices into their profile to allow single click connect of all devices into single WiFi session
Users can discover and buy sachet sized prepaid WiFi

Interoperability

‘Multiple” PDO Aggregators to cover the country
“Any” SME/Entity can be a PDO under a PDOA network
“Any” software/hardware company can offer “WANI Stack” for PDOAs with integrated management, monitoring, billing, etc.
“Any” payment gateway provider can be integrated by PDOA to collect payment
User can use “any” payment method acceptable in the country
User can use “any” WANI enabled consumer app for KYC and use it to connect (and optionally pay)

Connection Flow

User opens the App and browses for nearby WANI compliant SSIDs and then chooses one SSID to connect to.
WiFi Captive Portal of the PDO initiates user authentication with App provider backend using the token passed from the app.
App provider backend returns a signed user profile token back to PDOA Captive Portal.
WiFi Captive Portal displays data packs available with their charges. User selects desired data packs, click to confirm.
PDOA Captive Portal sends request for payment through their payment gateway.
User completes payment.
PDO activates all devices that were part of the Signed profile and allows them to connect to the session without additional authentication.
User starts browsing!

Payment Flow

User can specify “preferred payment method” within WANI enabled application
PDOA system can tie up with “any” payment gateway to “initiate” collection based on user’s preferred payment method
Payment authorization either happens within the payment app or using browser (for card, net banking, etc.)
If user chooses wallet or UPI, payment experience can be seamless and single-click
If WANI enabled app is also a wallet or UPI app, then payment authorization can be seamless
WANI app, payment app, and PDOA PG are all interoperable and NOT a closed loop system

Secure, Trustable, and Auditable

All API calls using digitally signed input
All exchanges under HTTPS/TLS
No credential exchange
Authenticity verification against the registry
Digitally signed tokens used for audit offering strong traceability
Secure electronic payment through any standard payment methods such as wallet, UPI, cards, etc.

WANI Benefits

Fully interoperable, secure, multi-provider, and unified KYC
Multi-device support with single-click secure user authentication
Users can use any preferred app for discovering and connecting to any WANI compliant hotspots with single-click
Users can use cash or any valid electronic payment mechanisms including upcoming UPI e-mandates
Entrepreneurs can create “WiFi in a box” software/hardware stack
Allows any SME or local entities to set up public paid WiFi hotspots using the WiFi in a box package
Allows last mile connectivity to be bridged in India