Facebook and the Indian telecom operator Bharti Airtel have established an alliance that will allow millions of Indian citizens to access the internet through 20.000 low-cost Wi-Fi access points.
Under the official name of «Express Wi-Fi», this program has been created in collaboration with XNUMX local companies of the States of Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Meghalaya and at the moment, a total of seven hundred of these Wi-Fi access points have already been activated, however, as has been published in BuzzFeed News, the rest will be established over the next few months.
The cost of access for these Express Wi-Fi hotspots has been set by the partners, not Facebook. According to the information provided, Prices range from Rs 10 (about € 0,14) for 100MB to Rs 300 (about € 4,25) for 20GB of data per day.
Munish Seth, head of Facebook connectivity solutions for the Asia-Pacific region, said in a statement that Express Wi-Fi has been designed to serve as complement to the mobile data offer that already exists, "Providing a low-cost, high-bandwidth alternative to get and access applications, and download and stream content.
The leading role of Facebook in this news is better understood if we know that nearly 10% of Facebook's nearly 2 billion users come from India, to which we must add 200 million WhatsApp users, owned by the social network.
Furthermore, India is one of the largest markets in the world, and the fastest growing, which is why companies are interested in investing there, as is the case with Xiaomi, which will soon open its first Mi Home there.
Google also offers free Wi-Fi hotspots at 100 Indian railway stations, it appears that it is expanding the service to museums, restaurants and more across the country.
