HFCL to set up 2nd model PM-WANI Village in Brahmavara’s Baidebettu village

Press Release, Jun 24, 2021, 4:28 PM IST

HFCL , PM-WANI Village, Brahmavara, Baidebettu village

Udupi: Leading Indian Wi-Fi brand and one of the first TIP OpenWiFi compliant solutions provider, IO by HFCL, in collaboration with Telecom Infra Project (TIP), announced setting up their 2nd PM-WANI powered connectivity for Baidebettu village in Karnataka. This PM-WANI network will provide high speed Wi-Fi Internet to over 9,000 residents of the otherwise poorly connected village located in Brahmavara Taluk, Udupi district.

The project entails setting up a robust outdoor Wi-Fi network for providing broadband Internet connectivity to the entire village population. The outdoor network will use HFCL IO’s TIP OpenWiFi-based Access Points, Point-to-Point radios, Solar Power over Ethernet (PoE) devices and other network equipment. The Wi-Fi network authentication and regulatory monitoring will be powered by i2e1 core solutions who will also act as the Public Data Office Aggregator (PDOA) under the PM-WANI model. The network is expected to go live by July 31, 2021.

The integrated package being deployed is indigenously developed and built in India for high performance, is fully secure and designed to withstand and perform under harsh weather conditions including heavy rainfall that the village receives throughout the year.

The network will offer Wi-Fi Internet with bandwidth of up to 500 Mbps in all common areas of the village that is spread across a radius of 6 kilometers. Due to its remote location under high rainfall zone, and absence of IT and Internet infrastructure, Baidebettu presently does not have any reliable connectivity. As a result, villagers earlier would travel many kilometers to nearby towns to get digitally connected. Recent Covid-19 restrictions further impacted this travel and have severely affected their lives.

With this deployment, the entire village of 9,000 population will come under the broadband fold, which is expected to significantly improve their quality of life by providing them access to digital services such as healthcare, education, banking, retail, entertainment, government digital services and many more.

After the huge success of HFCL’s first PM-WANI model village deployment, which was set up three months ago in the small remote village of Baslambi in Haryana, HFCL intends to replicate the model and once again demonstrate the strength of the PM-WANI concept powered by TIP’s multi-vendor compatible OpenWiFi capabilities. HFCL believes that this will not only connect the residents of this remote village and offer them access to all digital services but also inspire other ISPs and solution providers to collaborate & innovate to address the two biggest challenges to rural connectivity – affordability and accessibility.

HFCL’s Promoter & Managing Director, Mr. Mahendra Nahata said, “We at HFCL are committed to transforming #InternetForAll into a ubiquitous reality and have successfully collaborated with leading core solution providers to strengthen the connectivity ecosystem. After great success of our first model PM-WANI village in North India, where we deployed our robust, scalable, interoperable, and TIP OpenWiFi based Access Points to provide broadband access, we are now replicating the model in a remote village in Southern India. With this initiative, we believe students in the village will no longer need to travel to get connected and this would pave the way for every villager to stay connected and explore infinite possibilities to grow in all areas of life. This further demonstrates our faith in PM-WANI scheme as a significant enabler in connecting the remotest parts of the country.”

TIP’s Chief Engineer David Hutton said: “We are glad to have HFCL as an active participant of the TIP OpenWiFi community. It is heartening to see HFCL’s enthusiasm and commitment to making multi-vendor Wi-Fi architecture a reality. HFCL’s “Built in India” disaggregated OpenWiFi solutions in conjunction with PM-WANI demonstrates early success in employing TIP OpenWiFi to address the digital divide.”

“We are pleased to associate with HFCL for yet another PM-WANI opportunity. It feels proud to be part of another HFCL’s “Connect the Unconnected” initiative using their TIP OpenWiFi compliant solutions. This further emphasizes HFCL’s commitment to make in India world class network equipment to connect the unconnected. This also demonstrates their faith in PM-WANI scheme as the key driver to provide broadband Internet access to all citizens of the country,” said Satyam Darmora, Founder & CEO, i2e1.