A Win-Win for All: PM-WANI’s Potential to Transform India’s Digital Public Infrastructure

Why in News?

• India’s Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has a major contribution towards Digital India vision resulting in a massive increase in data consumption.
• However, the gap between demand and affordable supply of data remains quite wide, especially for poor households and rural India. 

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI)

• It is an open-source identity platform that can be used to access a wide variety of government and private services by building applications and products on a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) like India Stack.
• It includes digital forms of ID and verification, civil registration, payment (digital transactions and money transfers), data exchange, and information systems.
• It is customisable, localisable, interoperable and leverage public data for open innovation models.

Digital India Programme

• The Digital India Programme has three main vision areas: Connectivity, software and services on demand and digital empowerment of citizens.
• The connectivity landscape has been transformed in the last seven years due to multiple factors like the boom in mobile telephony, 4G coverage, significant reduction in tariffs and increased smartphone penetration.
• Enabling policies like Net Neutrality and focus on building DPI, particularly Digital ID and UPI, have further contributed to the Digital India vision, resulting in a massive increase in digital transactions. 

Impact of Digital India Programme

• Since its launch in 2015, the Digital India campaign has left its impact in various fields and could boost GDP up to $1 trillion by 2025.
• Around 12000 post office branches in the rural areas have been linked electronically.
• Healthcare and education sector has also seen a boost through DPI. Improvement in online infrastructure will further enhance the economy of the country.

Challenges of Digital India Programme

• Digital illiteracy
  • Where there is still 25% illiteracy the target of high level of digital illiteracy is one of the biggest challenges.
  • According to a 2016 report of ASSOCHAM-Deloitte, around 950 million Indians are still not on internet.
  • India has 1600 languages and dialects. Non availability of digital services in local Languages is a great barrier in digital literacy.
• The Gap Between Demand and Affordable Supply: The gap between demand (India’s per capita data consumption stands at a whopping 19.5 GB per month) and affordable supply remains quite wide, especially for poor households and rural India.

Government’s Initiative Towards Affordable Supply of Data: PM-WANI

• The creation of inter-operable public Wi-Fi hotspots was one such idea proposed by TRAI in 2017.
• Similar in concept to the PCOs, it proposed to create millions of interoperable Wi-Fi hotspots called Public Data Offices (PDOs), which would foster a shared infrastructure as a last-mile distribution of broadband in sachet-sized packages of Rs 5-10.
• The idea was successfully piloted and submitted to the Department of Telecom (DOT) as Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (WANI), in March 2017.
• This transformational idea- PM-WANI- was approved by the union cabinet in December 2020.
• Under this, no licence or permit was needed for operations to start and start-ups who had participated in the initial pilot have already started the work.

Advantages of PM-WANI

• Provides Affordable Data to Poor Families: More than 1.5 lakh Wi-Fi hotspot have been installed (In the last year alone) and more than a million people are getting unlimited internet daily by paying just Rs 5-10.
• Another DPI in Connectivity Field
  • By introducing various entities such as PDOs, PDOAs, app providers, and a central registry, an open and scalable framework has been created.
  • In the way UPI transformed the financial space in India, PM WANI is going to become a unique DPI in connectivity.
• Offers a Business Opportunity: This framework offers a compelling business opportunity for aggregators as it allows unbundling of internet distribution at the last mile, eliminating the need for additional licensing fees.
• Win-Win Situation for All
  • Currently, India’s home broadband penetration is one of the lowest in the world.
  • PM-WANI presents a golden opportunity to accelerate high-speed unlimited internet penetration, bridging the digital divide and empowering communities nationwide.
  • It provides a robust foundation for delivering affordable internet access to a significant portion of society.
  • By creating a win-win situation for all key stakeholders, PM-WANI also nurtures the growth of local nano entrepreneurs.
  • These last-mile providers, found in small shops, local establishments, and even households, augment their monthly earnings while promoting internet usage.

Way Forward

• Although infrastructure laid out by major companies like RailTel and GAIL already exists, it is currently underutilised.
• Moreover, many large Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are hesitant to enter underserved areas.
• This presents a golden opportunity for the PM-WANI framework to flourish. It also benefits ISPs and Telcos as they end up selling more bandwidth by making their end customers retailers.

Conclusion

• PM-WANI needs to be promoted by all stakeholders, as it is uniquely Indian in its approach of interoperability, openness, and scalability.
• Hopefully, it will accelerate like UPI and the other DPIs being built in India.
   

Q1) What is Net Neutrality?

Network neutrality ensures that all data on the internet is treated equally by internet service providers (ISPs) and governments, regardless of content, user, platform, application, or device. For users, net neutrality enables access and transparency of internet content and allows access to all internet services and applications. 

Q2) What are some advantages of the Digital India Programme?

Digital India Mission has enabled an increase in electronic transactions related to e-governance. An optical fibre network of 2, 74,246 km has connected over 1.15 lakh Gram Panchayats under the Bharat Net programme. Under Digital India, a Common Service Center (CSC) is created under the National e-Governance Project of the Indian government which provides access for information and communication technology (ICT). Through computer and Internet access, the CSCs provide multimedia content related to e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment, and other government and private services.

Source: The Indian Express