India Govt to set up 7.5 lakh public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2018-end The rollout — mainly focussed at providing high-speed internet in semi-urban and rural areas — will be carried out by private operators. Wi-Fi, while being a backbone of digital infrastructure across many countries, has seen a lacklustre growth in India with only about 31,000 hotspots in 2016. NEW DELHI: The government has decided to give a major push to Wi-Fi deployment across the length and breadth of the country and will facilitate the setting up of as many as 7.5 lakh public-internet hotpots by the end of next year. The rollout — mainly focussed at providing high-speed internet in semi-urban and rural areas — will be carried out by private operators such as Reliance Jio, Airtel , Vodafone, Idea Cellular and state-owned BSNL, apart from internet service providers (ISPs), Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said. "The idea is to enable e-governance and digital-development init...