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Smart cities' vision get a boost from WBA

Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), in association with FICCI, hosted the WBA Vision Forum 2015

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Sanghamitra Kar
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NEW DELHI, INDIA: Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), in association with FICCI, hosted the WBA Vision Forum 2015.

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WBA introduced its first initiative in India to discuss the transformational role of Wi-Fi in Connected City Deployments by bringing together close to 200 executives and experts from around the world, including Indian network operators, technology providers, senior government officials and regulators.

Connected City Advisory Board aims to help to deliver the vision of Connected Cities being pursued by a growing number of cities from around the world. It provides an exclusive platform for City Managers and CIOs to knowledge-share and create best practices with their counterparts in other cities and also determine the best way to leverage public-private partnerships.

Delhi is now the first Indian city to join the Advisory Board. Ashish Khetan, Vice Chairman, Government of Delhi, said, "This provides a great platform for city managers and CIOs to share knowledge and learn from best practices. I am happy to announce that the Government of Delhi has decided to join the Connected City Advisory Board and will be working in close association with WBA and ecosystem partners to develop Connected City plans and blue prints & create public-private ecosystems for collaboration. We see this association playing a major role helping our vision for city wide Wi-Fi.”

Talking about India’s hotspot-density as compared to the world, Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, WBA, mentioned that China was way ahead to India. India stands at 1 hotspot per 41.733 people, whereas, China stands at 1 hotspot per 253 people.

Aruna Sundarraj, Secretary, Govt. of India and Head of USFO Fund & Managing Director of Bharat Government said, “I acknowledge the fact that Wi-Fi will play a transformational role in building the Smart Cities and it will work as a robust platform for a better, connected India. The global population continues to grow at a steady pace& more and more people are moving to cities every single day, accordingly, there is a crying need for the cities to get smarter to handle this large-scale urbanization and finding new ways to manage complexity, increase efficiency, reduce expenses, and improve quality of life.”

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