The internet in a sachet: this idea’s time has come

Why in the News

Five years after Union Cabinet approval, the Prime Minister’s Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI), India’s framework for cheap public Wi-Fi sold through small shops, remains largely unfulfilled. The proposed fix is to let BharatNet, the state’s rural optical fibre network, sell bandwidth cheaply to these shops, so each failing project supplies what the other lacks.

What is PM-WANI, and how was it meant to work?

1. What it is: PM-WANI lets any shop run a hotspot on one shared, open Wi-Fi network, much as the old public call office (PCO) put a telephone within walking distance of most Indians.
2. Public Data Office (PDO): The hotspot outlet, a corner shop or tea stall, sells “internet in a sachet”, a rupee’s worth at a time that poor buyers can afford.
3. No central gatekeeper: A single app finds the nearest hotspot, verifies the user, takes payment through any wallet and connects across providers. It began as Nandan Nilekani‘s idea of “an Uber for hotspots”.
4. Pilot and approval: A Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) pilot with eight entities ran about 600 hotspots successfully. Cabinet approval came only in December 2020.
5. The takeaway: Cheap, shared Wi-Fi near people’s homes works, but India has not made it pay for the shopkeeper.

Why has public Wi-Fi not taken root?

1. Scale gap: India leads the world in digital payments and mobile data use but has few public hotspots, against over 13 million in far less populous France.
2. Costly backhaul: Backhaul is the wired link from a hotspot to the wider internet. A PDO pays more for that fibre than a household does, so it loses money before selling a sachet.
3. Protection of incumbents: Officials have shielded the big incumbent telecom operators, which never welcomed a million small Wi-Fi sellers as competitors.

Why does public Wi-Fi still matter?

1. Cheap mobile data objection: Mobile data is sold in monthly plans of a couple of hundred rupees, which the poorest cannot always afford. A family’s one plan often sits on someone else’s phone.
2. Bundled plans: Monthly bundles ended small purchases, even as demand for online education, telemedicine and government services grew where mobile signal is weakest.
3. Unlicensed spectrum: Public Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum, frequencies needing no auctioned licence, so it takes load off congested mobile networks.
4. Duopoly risk: Over a billion people depend on two or three companies, close to a duopoly. Open Wi-Fi is an alternative no single firm can switch off.

How can BharatNet and PM-WANI complete each other?

1. BharatNet’s cost: Begun in 2011 to carry fibre to every gram panchayat, BharatNet has absorbed over Rs 48,000 crore.
2. Reach without revenue: It has reached over 2 lakh of the 2.5 lakh gram panchayats but earns almost nothing from that fibre.
3. Common carrier model: BharatNet should act as a common carrier, selling bandwidth to PDOs and aggregators on fair terms, like a power transmission company supplying distributors.
4. First regulatory step: TRAI’s June 2025 tariff order, capping what a PDO pays for retail fibre, is a first step that needs follow through.

Challenges

1. Terrain beyond fibre: Even a fully monetised BharatNet will leave gaps in hilly and forested areas that fibre may never reach.
2. Unsettled alternatives: Starlink and other satellite entrants target those gaps, and Reliance Jio could carry backhaul, but clearances are still pending.
3. Digital illiteracy: Cheap access does not help those who cannot go online. Eg. Half of offline rural households cannot use the internet (2025 survey).

Way Forward

1. Capped wholesale price: The Department of Telecommunications should fix a capped, transparent price for BharatNet bandwidth sold to PDOs.
2. Enforceable service guarantees: Bind BharatNet to uptime and speed guarantees with penalties, so shopkeepers can rely on it.
3. Satellite backhaul for hills: Let satellite broadband carry PDO traffic where fibre cannot reach, once clearances are settled.

Conclusion

India built the design, the pilot and the fibre for cheap public Wi-Fi, and pricing that favoured incumbents over small sellers is what stalled it. Whether the state prices its own fibre for the corner shop rather than for the big operators will decide if cheap, small internet purchases return.

Government Initiatives for Rural Digital Connectivity

1. Amended BharatNet Programme: Extends fibre to the remaining gram panchayats and about 3.8 lakh villages that are not panchayat headquarters.
2. Digital Bharat Nidhi: The Telecommunications Act, 2023 replaced the Universal Service Obligation Fund with this fund, which finances rural telecom access, including BharatNet.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026] An e-commerce revenue model where the seller has control over pricing but doesn’t keep products in stock and instead transfers customer orders and shipment details to a third-party supplier, who then ships the goods directly to the customer, is called: (a) Dropshipping Model (b) Affiliate Revenue Model (c) Transaction Fee Revenue Model (d) Agency Revenue Model ANSWER: A”