Tourist hub Mysore goes wireless

BANGALORE: Don't let the traditional charm and the royal ambience of Mysore fool you. This Dasara festive season, Mysore became the only city in India to become completely Wi-Fi enabled. The entire city area spanning 130 sq km has gone wireless.

The Mysore "hot zone" was made possible by the efforts of a local ISP called Wi-fiyNet which, has erected three towers at different corners of the city. State IT and BT secretary Shankaralinge Gowda inaugurated the wireless service on October 11.

Speaking to CyberMedia News, the company's director Shankar Prasad said, " We wanted to showcase this technology in Mysore and want to replicate this model in other cities in India."

A central tower which acts as a central access point and two other towers form the framework of the wireless infrastructure. Each tower costs around Rs 20 lakh and this investment has been borne by the company. The 108 Mbps network runs on a secure WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol.

Next on the radar is Kushalnagar in Coorg district, located in a hilly terrain and a potential hub due to the presence of the Tibetan monastery and the golden temple leading to huge tourist inflow. " We plan to build south India's longest Internet link spanning 96 kms from Mysore to Kushalnagar.

He added that providing Wi-Fi capabilities in a tough terrain like Coorg would be an excellent technology showcase.

Wi-FiyNet, which is a registered ISP in Mysore is trying to migrate its subscribers from wired to wireless Internet. "Right now, we have around 50 active subscribers and plan to increase to a thousand by March 2005." The company is trying to sign on local engineering colleges, medical transcription companies and software companies for the service.

The company is ambitious about its plans to take Wi-Fi to other cities. "We want to go for a franchisee business model and will initially look at the South Indian market. We will start looking for suitable business partners starting December this year," said Prasad.