Mumbaiites are set to take a giant leap into the virtual world. By next year, the city’s 1.3 crore people will have unlimited access to wireless connectivity in any part of the city.

The service will be affordable and can be used for everything from watching videos to making calls and even knowing the police security in your area. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is in the final stages of inviting tenders to select the service provider for uninterrupted supply and high-end connectivity.

“Tenders will be invited by next month and the project will be executed on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis. The BMC will not be spending money on this project,” said STP Director-General Rajendra Jagdale.

Pune University’s Science and Technology Park (STP) has already been appointed consultants to handle the project. The STP is handling a similar project for Pimpri-Chnichwad in Pune district. Pune city was the first in the country to undertake wireless services for citizens.

The entire 400 sq km area of Mumbai will be enabled with intranet and will have a wi-fi mesh combination of fibre cables and wi-fi networks. Jagdale said that the Mumbai project will be on a much bigger scale and boost the standard of living through greater citizen participation.

“The main aim is to provide citizen-centric services on the wireless,” he said. Users can access any service like video on demand, internet protocol based TV (IPTV), digital libraries, local television, education, tele-medicine and even basic things like BEST bus timings and police security. “Instead of the Internet, which is more expensive, there will be Intranet which will act like a local network in the city,” Jagdale explained.

The consultants are currently working on the Detailed Project Report (DPR). Jagdale said that the proposed wi-fi network will have zero downtime.

“Even in case a service on a particular tower fails, other towers will take over so that the network does not get affected,” he pointed out. The BMC’s0 role in the project will be to provide the ‘backbone’ and identify technology which will provide services.

“Instead of one company, we will select different companies so that maximum services can be provided to citizens,” he added. Like other wi-fi networks, citizens will be provided with the login name and password that can be used to access the intranet.