The Lift Line
“It is time to bring the internet in a sachet to every Indian.” (R. S. Sharma, The Indian Express)
Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam
This signed column in The Indian Express of 13 October 2026, “A digital India needs Wi-fi for everyone”, is by R. S. Sharma, who writes as “a former chairman of TRAI and former secretary, Government of India”. It is his argument, not the paper’s. He writes as one of the people who designed the model: “At TRAI, we built exactly that”.
His case, in one line: India’s open public Wi-Fi framework, PM-WANI, is well designed but has stalled because small sellers pay too much for backhaul, and the fix is to let BharatNet’s fibre supply them on fair terms.
The column has no news peg; it is an argument about a scheme that has been in place since 2020. For TRAI’s other work on connectivity, see our September roundup on digital connectivity ratings.
GS Paper 3: Infrastructure (telecom and digital connectivity); inclusive growth. GS Paper 2: Government policies and interventions; regulatory bodies such as TRAI. Essay: technology, access and the digital divide.
In the news: a former TRAI chairman argues that public Wi-Fi under PM-WANI has stalled on the cost of backhaul, and that BharatNet’s fibre could revive it.
Background and Context
Key terms first
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| PM-WANI | The Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface, the framework for public Wi-Fi through small sellers, approved by the Union Cabinet in December 2020 |
| Public Data Office (PDO) | It “will establish, maintain, and operate only WANI compliant Wi-Fi Access Points and deliver broadband services to subscribers”; TRAI had in mind small entities such as kirana and pan shops |
| Public Data Office Aggregator (PDOA) | An aggregator of PDOs that handles authorisation and accounting |
| App Provider | Builds the app that registers users and shows nearby PM-WANI hotspots |
| Central Registry | Keeps the details of App Providers, PDOs and PDOAs; maintained by C-DoT to begin with |
| Backhaul | The link that carries a hotspot’s traffic to the wider internet, usually a fibre broadband connection |
| Unlicensed (delicensed) spectrum | Radio frequencies that devices may use without a licence or frequency assignment, within set power limits; Wi-Fi runs on such bands |
How the scheme is set up
The Cabinet release of December 2020 set three features that matter for Prelims. There is no licence fee for providing broadband through these public Wi-Fi networks. PDOs need no registration. PDOAs and App Providers register with the Department of Telecommunications through an online portal, without a registration fee, and registration is to be granted within seven days of the application.
How it got here
| When | What happened |
|---|---|
| July 2016 | TRAI issued a consultation paper (the author’s account) |
| 9 March 2017 | TRAI’s recommendations on “Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks” proposed an “unbundled and distributed model” |
| October 2017 to January 2018 | TRAI ran a public Wi-Fi pilot; its report came out on 5 April 2018. MediaNama reported eight entities and nearly 600 Wi-Fi networks in it |
| 29 May 2020 | The Department of Telecommunications sent a back-reference to TRAI, which TRAI noted came “after a lapse of three years” from its recommendations |
| 9 December 2020 | The Union Cabinet approved public Wi-Fi networks through PDOAs and PDOs, “without levy of any License Fee” (PIB) |
| 16 June 2025 | TRAI’s tariff order: Internet Service Providers must offer retail fibre-to-the-home plans up to 200 Mbps to PDOs at tariffs not exceeding twice the consumer tariff (as described by PIB) |
| January 2026 | The lower 6 GHz band (5925 to 6425 MHz) was delicensed for low-power indoor and very low-power outdoor devices, as reported by Business Standard |
| 28 February 2026 | 4,09,403 PDOs operational; 207 PDOAs and 113 App Providers registered (PIB, Rajya Sabha reply) |
PM-WANI in numbers
| Measure | Figure (as on 28 February 2026, PIB) |
|---|---|
| PDOs (public Wi-Fi hotspots) operational | 4,09,403 |
| PDOAs registered | 207 |
| App Providers registered | 113 |
| Users who have accessed PM-WANI hotspots | 2,44,67,896 |
| Data consumed | about 58.64 petabytes since the launch of the scheme |
For scale, TRAI noted in 2020 that India had “less than 0.1 Million public Wi-Fi hotspots”, and it quoted Cisco’s forecast of “nearly 628 million public Wi-Fi hotspots by 2023” worldwide. The column’s “over 600 million” for the world fits that forecast, which is a projection for 2023, not a count for today.
BharatNet, the other half of his case
| Item | What the record shows |
|---|---|
| Original aim | To connect about 2.5 lakh gram panchayats; the Telecom Commission approved three phases on 30 April 2016 (PIB) |
| Reach | Of 2,22,341 gram panchayats taken up under Phases I and II, 2,14,904 were service-ready (PIB, December 2025) |
| Cost | Phases I and II were “implemented at an approximate cost of ₹42,000 crore” (PIB, February 2026). The column’s “more than Rs 48,000 crore” is the author’s figure |
| Next phase | The Amended BharatNet Programme, approved by the Union Cabinet on 4 August 2023, for fibre to about 2.64 lakh gram panchayats and about 3.8 lakh non-gram-panchayat villages on demand, on a Design, Build, Operate and Maintain model |
| Funding | The Digital Bharat Nidhi, which replaced the Universal Service Obligation Fund |
The Analysis
1. A sound design. Sharma describes the model TRAI built as an “open, interoperable architecture with no central gatekeeper”: anyone can set up or aggregate a hotspot, and one app finds the nearest one, verifies the user, takes payment and connects across providers. His analogy is “the humble PCO”, which put a telephone within walking distance of most Indians by turning a shopkeeper into its keeper. The PDO is the PCO for the internet, selling data in small amounts, because “the poor do not buy the bottle; they buy the sachet.”
2. Why it stalled. “Five years on, the promise remains largely unfulfilled.” His main reason: “The single biggest reason is the cost of backhaul”. A small PDO pays more for the same fibre broadband that a household buys cheaply, which ruins its economics before it sells anything. He adds “a persistent official tenderness towards incumbent telecom operators”, which he says were never keen on a million small competitors.
3. Is cheap mobile data enough? He calls the objection that mobile data has made Wi-Fi unnecessary “plausible, and wrong.” Data now comes in fixed monthly plans that the poorest cannot always afford, and that do not help a student when the family’s one data plan is on someone else’s phone. “The sachet has not become unnecessary; it has merely been abolished by the operators’ tariff design”. TRAI made a similar point in 2020: mobile users in many major economies spend 50 to 70 per cent of their usage time on Wi-Fi, against less than 10 per cent in India.
4. The strategic case. “Public Wi-Fi runs on unlicensed spectrum”, which spares congested mobile networks, and an open Wi-Fi layer reduces what he calls “a dangerous dependence on a duopoly”. The spectrum point has grown stronger: the lower 6 GHz band was delicensed for low-power Wi-Fi use in January 2026, as reported by Business Standard. The exemption covers only that lower band and comes with power limits.
5. Two failures, one cure. BharatNet has fibre in the ground but, he says, earns almost nothing, because bandwidth with no retail distribution “is a pipe with no taps”. His remedy: “BharatNet is a big pipe without a last mile; PM-WANI is a last mile starving for a cheap, big pipe.” Let BharatNet act as a common carrier, selling bandwidth to PDOs and aggregators “much as a power-transmission company carries electricity to its distributors”, with “A capped, transparent wholesale price, and enforceable service guarantees”. This is his proposal, not current policy.
6. What the record adds. The Government has eased the scheme more than the column admits. PDOs may now use fibre-to-the-home connections and aggregate several access points on one backhaul, offer mobile data offloading to telecom operators, and roam across aggregators; existing home and business Wi-Fi networks can join. TRAI’s tariff order of June 2025, which he calls “a welcome first step that must be followed through”, limits what PDOs pay for retail fibre. The test now is rural reach: whether hotspots appear where mobile signal is weak, which is where BharatNet’s fibre runs.
Data and Institutions Vault
Prelims-grade facts:
PM-WANI:
- Approval: Union Cabinet, 9 December 2020; no licence fee for broadband through these public Wi-Fi networks.
- Players: Public Data Office (PDO), PDO Aggregator (PDOA), App Provider and Central Registry (kept by C-DoT to begin with).
- Registration: none for PDOs; PDOAs and App Providers register online with DoT, free, within seven days.
- Scale on 28 February 2026: 4,09,403 PDOs; 207 PDOAs; 113 App Providers (PIB).
- TRAI tariff order, 16 June 2025: fibre plans up to 200 Mbps for PDOs at no more than twice the consumer tariff.
TRAI and spectrum:
- Recommendations: 9 March 2017, an “unbundled and distributed model” for public Wi-Fi.
- Lower 6 GHz band: 5925 to 6425 MHz delicensed for low-power Wi-Fi devices in January 2026 (Business Standard).
BharatNet:
- Phases I and II: 2,14,904 of 2,22,341 gram panchayats service-ready (December 2025); about Rs 42,000 crore.
- Amended BharatNet Programme: approved 4 August 2023; about 2.64 lakh gram panchayats and 3.8 lakh other villages.
- Funding: Digital Bharat Nidhi, which replaced the Universal Service Obligation Fund.
⚠️ Watch the trap: The Cabinet approved PM-WANI on 9 December 2020; that is not a launch date. The 4,09,403 figure counts PM-WANI PDOs on 28 February 2026, not all Wi-Fi hotspots in India. PDOs need no registration; PDOAs and App Providers do. Only the lower 6 GHz band was delicensed, for low-power devices. Cisco’s 628 million hotspots is a forecast for 2023, not a current count. “Internet in a sachet” is the author’s phrase, not an official name.
The Debate
| Sharma’s case | The other view |
|---|---|
| PM-WANI’s promise “remains largely unfulfilled” | It had over 4 lakh PDOs and about 2.45 crore users by February 2026 |
| Backhaul costs kill the small PDO | TRAI’s June 2025 order now limits retail fibre tariffs for PDOs; its effect has yet to show |
| Cheap mobile data does not replace the sachet | Mobile data is cheap, and by the author’s own account India leads the world in mobile-data use; small Wi-Fi sales must compete with that |
| The state favours incumbent operators | The Government has added offloading, roaming and home Wi-Fi integration to the scheme |
| BharatNet should sell bandwidth to PDOs as a common carrier | It is a proposal; wholesale pricing and service guarantees on BharatNet would need a new policy |
How to Think About This
Treat any connectivity scheme as a chain with three links: spectrum (can the signal be sent cheaply?), backhaul (can the traffic reach the internet cheaply?) and retail (can a user buy small amounts easily?). PM-WANI solved the retail link with its open design, and delicensed spectrum serves the first. Sharma’s point is that the middle link, backhaul, is where the scheme breaks, and that BharatNet is the public asset that could mend it.
In an answer, give the scheme’s design with its date (Cabinet approval, December 2020), one dated figure (4,09,403 PDOs at the end of February 2026), and then the backhaul argument and the BharatNet link.
Keep the keywords ready: public Wi-Fi, Public Data Office, interoperability, backhaul, unlicensed spectrum, common carrier and last-mile connectivity.
Diagram-in-Words
A good design starved of a cheap pipe
R. S. Sharma’s case for PM-WANI and BharatNet, set beside what the record shows.
Takeaway Box
- The argument: PM-WANI’s open design is sound, but small PDOs pay too much for backhaul; BharatNet should sell them bandwidth on fair terms.
- The scheme: approved by the Union Cabinet on 9 December 2020; no licence fee; PDOs need no registration.
- The numbers: 4,09,403 PDOs, 207 PDOAs and 113 App Providers on 28 February 2026.
- The fibre: about 2.15 lakh gram panchayats service-ready under BharatNet Phases I and II, at about Rs 42,000 crore.
- The line to quote: “It is time to bring the internet in a sachet to every Indian.”
Revision Flowchart
Wi-Fi for Everyone: PM-WANI Public Hotspots and BharatNet
Covers the terms, Prelims pointers and traps, Mains pointers, the way forward and a practice question.
Sources:
- The Indian Express, R. S. Sharma, “A digital India needs Wi-fi for everyone”, 13 October 2026
- PIB (Cabinet), release of 9 December 2020 on public Wi-Fi networks
- PIB (Ministry of Communications), Rajya Sabha reply of 2 April 2026 on PM-WANI
- TRAI, Recommendations on Proliferation of Broadband through Public Wi-Fi Networks (response to DoT’s back-reference), 5 June 2020; TRAI notice on the pilot report, 2018
- MediaNama, report on TRAI’s public Wi-Fi pilot, April 2018
- PIB releases on BharatNet of 21 April 2025, 17 December 2025 and 12 February 2026
- Business Standard, report on the lower 6 GHz band, 21 January 2026
Source: Wi-Fi for Everyone: PM-WANI Public Hotspots and BharatNet — Ujiyari.com | Free UPSC & State PCS Editorial Analysis
