Google V Facebook In WiFi War

Google and Facebook compete to attract hundreds of millions of potential Indian users.

16:17 09 May 2017

Google and Facebook are competing head to head to attract hundreds of millions of potential Indians to use their respective services. The two internet giants have pull out all the stops to develop new scale-up technologies hoping to bring in the majority of Indian population onto their platform. Both are now tapping WiFi hotspots.

 

Facebook has developed an innovative service distribution scheme and has teamed up with Indian telco Airtel to roll out 700 hotspots across Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Meghalaya and Rajasthan. It plans to roll out an additional 20,000 more hotspots across India. Facebook is also expected to partner with 500 local retailers and the like to distribute Wi-Fi service at appropriate, affordable prices.

 

Google, on the other hand, has thrown in its lot with Indian rail company, RailTel, to hotspot hundreds of railway stations in India. The project aims to offer WiFi service in 400 train stations in India by 2018.

 

Geng Lin, CTO of Google’s Enterprise Network and Infrastructure Services division, said that the service is currently coping with six million monthly users and shifting about 200 Terabits of data per day.