Unwiring india: another small step

You might call it too little, too late. But after a year of sitting on it,

the WPC (the Wireless Planning & Coordination wing of the Department of

Telecom) finally issued a notification on August 25, opening up the 2.4 GHz band

for indoor use, subject to power limitations.

So we no longer need a license to buy and use any Wi-Fi equipment in that

band — including 802.11b and 802.11g-as long as the coverage is within your

(campus) boundaries

So far (since early 2003) you could use only 802.11b and Bluetooth devices

freely. Which was a bother. Most current Wi-Fi devices are 802.11g, and there's

no logical reason to distinguish between the two 2.4 GHz standards. Especially

when .g is more spectrum efficient.

The penalty was twofold. 802.11b is slow. 11 Mbps sounds okay, but you

actually get about half that; and in real, shared LANs, you'd be lucky to get

1 Mbps. That's fine for Internet access (where the back-end DSL connectivity

is itself much slower), but it's no good for office LANs, where we're used

to 100 Mbps. Transferring or installing from a CD could take an hour, instead of

5 minutes.

More importantly, it added to the confusion. CIOs would keep asking me:

"Isn't there some license we need for Wi-Fi?"

So would dealers. It wasn't very clear if they did need a license to sell

even 802.11b devices for indoor use. The new notification clarifies that no

license is required to use, own, resell or install any 2.4GHz band equipment

(802.11b/g) for indoor use.

So, albeit three years behind the rest of the world, we finally have Wi-Fi

'free to air' for indoor (in-campus) use. Which addresses most of the

application area of Wi-Fi, and clears the air considerably.

CIOs now have no reason to hesitate about Wi-Fi deployment, to put in an

access point in their meeting rooms. Wi-Fi is cheap: access points are dropping

to the Rs 3,000 level for 802.11b, and Rs 5,000 level for 802.11g (which also

works with .b devices). It's secure, if you ensure the basic hygiene-factor

security on your servers and clients, and enable security on the access points.

And now, it's fully de-licensed for most enterprise, commercial domestic use

situations.

This was a key point on the agenda for Project W, CyberMedia's initiative

to encourage wireless data and apps in India. The pending points are mostly

non-regulatory. They involve service providers (finding the business models),

enterprises (seeding, deploying and leveraging the technology) and developers

(tech work in this area is a big gap in India's impressive software

expertise). For Project W and for a wireless India, this is strike two: one more

hurdle down.