The Delhi government, which wants to make national capital a Wi-Fi city, has joined Connected City Advisory Board.

Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), the industry association focused on driving the next generation Wi-Fi experience, has established the advisory board to provide an exclusive platform for city managers and information officers to create best practices and to leverage public-private partnerships.  The WBA, in its first initiative in this direction, had organized Vision Forum 2015 in association with FICCI in New Delhi, yesterday. It was attended by nearly 200 executives and experts from around the world, including Indian network operators, technology providers, senior government officials and regulators.

Ashish Khetan, vice chairman of Delhi Dialogue Commission said, "I would like to congratulate Wireless Broadband Alliance for launching the Connected City Advisory Board initiative which will have leading cities from around the world join together to enable the vision for Connected Cities. 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.”

The conference discussed current state-of-the-art of Connected Cities, illustrated by case studies and real life experiences. It spoke of challenges faced by cities in India, the US, China & other leading citifies.  A roundtable discussion was held on the opportunities and challenges of connected city deployments, monetization strategies and how private/public partnerships could support the city developments.

On India’s hotspot-density, Shrikant Shenwai, CEO, WBA, mentioned that China was way ahead of India. India had 1 hotspot per 41.733 people, while China has 1 hotspot per 253 people.

Aruna Sundarraj, Secretary, government of India  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. More and more people are moving to cities and there is a crying need for the cities to get smarter to handle this large-scale urbanization, and finding ways to manage complexity, increase efficiency, reduce expenses, and improve quality of life.”

"We are glad to have taken the first step towards putting the foundation stone towards a better connected future. All the players in the telecom ecosystem should come together to perpetuate the success of this initiative taken by WBA and ensure the sustained realization of the Smart Cities, connected cities vision," said Rajan Mathews, Director General of Cellular Operators Association of India.

Ozone Network is company of the year in public Wi-Fi services in India
Leading market research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan has named Ozone Networks, India’s leading public Wi-Fi service provider, “Company of the Year in Public Wi-Fi Services.”

In its first industry survey on public Wi-Fi networks in the country, Frost & Sullivan has recognized Ozone Networks for its ability to create premier Wi-Fi hotspots across India in order to make Wi-Fi available as a superior service.

 The award acknowledges that Ozone Network is the only company building neutral Wi-Fi networks in India; others are mostly concentrating on standalone networks. Looking toward the future, Ozone has a vision of activating about 1 million Wi-Fi hotspots in India by 2020.

For the Company of the Year Award, Frost & Sullivan analysts independently evaluated two key factors—visionary innovation & performance and customer impact. Ozone Networks received a 9 out of 10 weighted rating, whereas its closest competitors received 8.5 and 7 ratings.

Sanjeev Bobby Sarin, founder and CEO, Ozone Networks, said, “We are delighted to receive this acknowledgement from an esteemed organization like Frost & Sullivan. This, for us, is a testimony to the hard work and confidence our customers have in us.”

Ozone has deployed 6,500 access points and 1,500 are public hotspots across 26 different cities.