Wireless data is one of the fastest-growing areas in the world. Yet India is way behind the W-curve. Public Wi-Fi hot spots are largely confined to a few five-star hotels and most mobile service operators do not actively sell their wireless data offerings.

Project W is an initiative from CyberMedia to study the problem along with leading stakeholders from the industry and the Government and suggest solutions and action points. To address the problem of low usage of Wi-Fi, Voice&Data, a CyberMedia Publication organized a panel discussion on "Wi-Fi: What can India do to catch up?" The Project W: Wi-Fi Panel identified these key areas of focus:

- Information gap: Lack of knowledge on Wi-Fi usage, availability and costs

- Penetration of mobile devices

- Regulatory: Restrictions on Wi-Fi require licenses for all except indoor use of one

- specific standard, 802.11b

- Lack of awareness of wireless data applications by both enterprises and vendors/integrators

The first Project W white paper lays down these issues, outlines action steps for the Project W committee, and lists recommendations for other stakeholders such as vendors, regulator and end-user enterprises.

Wi-Fi deployment is abysmally low in India, despite the technology being very cheap. It costs Rs 5,000 to install Wi-Fi in an office. Many new notebooks are Wi-Fi ready and older ones can be Wi-Fi-enabled with a card that costs around Rs 2,000. Project W is an effort towards promoting the use of wireless data technologies and applications in India. It includes events, white papers, promoting the usage of wireless technologies across various publications of CyberMedia and the use of wireless technologies by media Rapid growth and usage of Wi-Fi in India would create a wireless data culture that can in turn encourage the wireless application development industry and boost applications in specific verticals like health care, retail, finance and government. All this would accelerate PC penetration, especially that of laptops and PDAs. No doubt, higher data usage would ultimately benefit the Indian economy.

About CyberMedia

CyberMedia is South Asia's first and largest specialty media house, with nine publications (including Dataquest and PCQuest) in the infotech, telecom, consumer electronics and biotech areas; and a media value chain including the internet (www.ciol.com), events and television. The group's media services include market research (IDC India), content outsourcing, multimedia, gaming, and media education.

For further information, please contact

Sumit Sharma
CyberMedia
Cyber-House, B-35, Sector 32 Institutional
Gurgaon, Haryana -- 122002, India
Tel: 124-2381673-80 (prefix 95 from Delhi)
Email: sumits@cmil.com