Five years back, nobody could envisage the present success of coffee shop culture in India? with youngsters spending hours working, chatting and socialising in these coffee chains. Ten years back, nobody could visualise the addiction of Indian middle class to mobile phones, with subscriber base crossing 600 million today. And in the present scenario, one cannot imagine that how Wi-Fi adoption will change the internet penetration in the country after five years.

Recent times have seen increased number of hotspots in the country, estimated at around 5,000, courtesy efforts by telecom operators, retail chain owners and third party Wi-Fi providers. A hotspot is any location that offers wireless internet access. This implies, any person carrying a laptop or a Wi-Fi-enabled smartphone can access the internet from a hotspot. For instance, multinational chain Caf? Coffee Day, parts of Delhi University, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB), shopping malls like Ansal Plaza, prominent hotels, restaurants and health clubs, and even hospital chains have Wi-Fi hotspots for their customers.

Bobby Sarin, CEO of Ozone, a wireless internet and mobility solutions company says, ?Telecom operators want to increase their user base by offering Wi-Fi services. Most of the youngsters use hotspots connection for seeing video content, listening to music and social networking. On the other hand, sales and marketing officials have to constantly use emails for data transfer and other official interactions.? Ozone has created various hotspots across Caf? Coffee Day, Ansal Plaza, Trident and Oberoi hotels, Coffee Beans and Tea Leaves, and other niche outlets across various cities like Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata and Hyderabad.

Sarin further explains that the business model of companies like Ozone is to be an intermediate between the location owner and the telecom operator, where Ozone creates a Wi-Fi hotspot and partners with both the parties. Ozone aims to build 20,000 hotspots by 2013.Customers, usually take a prepaid coupon to use Wi-Fi services, but often these services are also free at locations like the airports. Industry analysts feel that customers no longer subscribe to Wi-Fi services, but rather seek out places that offer wireless internet services for free. This trend has resulted in several cafes, restaurants and other commercial outlets such as airports and hospitals include free Wi-Fi as an added incentive for their customers.

Jaideep Ghosh, director, KPMG tells that while telecom operators are concentrating on Wi-Fi penetration in residential areas, Wi-Fi solution providers are concentrating on creating hotspots in public domains. Compared to global trends, industry estimates also show Asia will soon be the top region for broadband wireless access (BWA) video consumption and, by 2017, this region is predicted to generate over half (53%) of all traffic, followed by Europe (26%) and North America (14%).

?Bharti Airtel currently offers connectivity across major airports and cafes and plans to grow Wi-Fi hotspots in India. Going ahead, Airtel Wi-Fi hotspots will be located at hotels, hospitals, chains of restaurants, coffee shops and corporate buildings that are the hub of corporate, community and social activities,? a company spokesperson says.

Last year even Tata Communications Internet Services and Tomizone announced a partnership deal by which the former will use Tomizone proprietary software to increase the base for Wi-Fi hotspots in the country. Auckland headquartered Tomizone is a leading Wi-Fi hotspot and metro Wi-Fi zone solutions provider. Early last year, the company had 1,000 Wi-Fi hotspots in India with Tata Indicom Wi-Fi having a share of over 50%.

In June 2009, India had the lowest penetration of broadband in the world at about 0.6% with 6.62 million subscribers. But the country is expected to take a leap in penetration with a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and IMRB Broadband Report forecasting 214 million subscribers by 2014.

Analysing the mindset of a handset provider, Amit Gujral, assistant general manager at LG Electronics says, ?Nowadays, youngsters constitute for majority of the mobile users in current times and LG as a popular telecom handsets provider wants to give its users all the lucrative communication tools for better service and quality. Ozone brings the possibility to have high speed internet at less rates on the move through its wide network of Wi-Fi hotspots. The major advantage in tying up with Ozone is that they are present at lot of popular coffee shops, various hotels, malls which will help LG mobile users to stay connected even while on the move.?

Interestingly, organised retail is just opening up in India and is a significant user of wireless computing solutions. World-class manufacturing facilities in the telecom and automotive sectors being setup in India are being Wi-Fi enabled. Healthcare seeking tourists are driving demand for Wi-Fi equipped hotels; hospitals are gearing up to provide the best in connectivity.

Moreover, mobile Wi-Fi will grow as handset markets use Wi-Fi for product differentiation and internet service providers (ISP) find innovative business models. Analysts claim that falling consumer electronics prices and a content hungry and tech-savvy younger generation are driving change.

One of the major issues India?s hotspots are facing, apart from competition from data cards is the billing problem particularly at airports and coffee shops. Systems integrators have reported that in most cases, pre-paid usage cards are being used to charge customers use of hotspots, but these solutions pose administrative difficulties, are not seamless, and sometimes do not work at all. A second problem is roaming accounts for travelers. Travelers are often reluctant to buy fixed slots of time from hotspot providers if they cannot use leftover in another airport elsewhere.

National roaming accounts are yet to come on offer from hotspot providers at the airports. Billing and roaming at India?s Wi-Fi hotspots too remain in need of seamless solutions. This presents an opportunity to Wi-Fi solution providers.

Thus, as India is moving towards a more mobile population, Wi-Fi connection will play an important role in increasing internet penetration in the country, which has reached 80 million today as, per comScore.