The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is likely to seek the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) views on freeing up spectrum in 60 GHz band for the telecom operators to provide free Wi-Fi services in the country. Once the spectrum in the band is freed, the operators would be able to deploy Wi-Fi solutions such as Wi-Fi data offloading to help improve the mobile broadband coverage in India.

DoT has been planning to vacate spectrum for providing Wi-Fi services in public places. In this regard, it has also identified 45 cities and 705 tourist locations to provide Wi-Fi services. Currently, only the spectrum in the 2400 MHz band is used for delivering these services.

Also, the telecom department will seek TRAI’s views on the alterations in the licence norms and interconnect pacts of Internet service providers (ISPs). These ISPs will have to partner with mobile carriers to facilitate such Wi-Fi offload services.