Bharti Airtel, Vodafone plan to take on Reliance Jio's WiFi service with Firefly Networks

NEW DELHI: India’s leading telecom operators’ — Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India — new joint venture in the WiFi space, Firefly Networks, is making strides in the country as it prepares to take on Mukesh Ambani owned Reliance Jio, which is also finalising its strategy for the country’s WiFi market, two persons familiar with the matter said.

Firefly Networks is currently looking to get maximum chunk of the WiFi deployments in NDMC areas of Delhi, besides targeting other state governments’ WiFi plans, which have got traction due to Modi government’s Digital India and Smart City initiatives.

The venture has been founded as an independent company as a 50:50 joint venture of the incumbent telcos. “Firefly is in the WiFi infrastructure space and is still finding out the business models and working on modalities on how to fund the venture for expansion and with what proposition to go to the market,” a person mentioned above said. “In a couple of months, it would have clarity regarding the venture. With partner OEMs, system integrators and telcos, it is trying to evolve business models.” Bharti Airtel didn’t respond to ET’s query while Vodafone India declined to comment on the matter.

Formed in 2014, the new venture still doesn’t have a proper office and is operating with a small team of 25-30 people, who have come over from Airtel, Vodafone and some from existing Wi-Fi service providers.

Vodafone’s senior vice-president Raj Sethia has joined as the full-time CEO of this new venture and is currently busy in further establishing its presence in the country. The venture’s director board includes Vodafone India’s CEOdesignate Sunil Sood and chief technology officer Vishant Vohra, Bharti Airtel’s director, consumer business Srinivasan Gopalan, and director, network services group Abhay Savargaonkar.

The venture has done some deployments in Delhi, which are yet to be launched commercially, including deployments in New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) areas such as Connaught Place and Khan Market. It will also be involved in Indus Towers’ latest NDMC project, which will equip 3,000 street light poles in the entire NDMC area with 2G/3G/4G technologies spread across a span of three years, with an investment of Rs 220 crore.

The newly-formed company is also pitching for its share in the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s plan to provide Delhi citizens with WiFi facilities. “Whatever business has come to Firefly is from Bharti Airtel and Vodafone India,” the second person said.

Industry watchers say that the move to form a new venture by the two telcos is essentially an effort to check Jio to take the lead in the WiFi space. Jio, the pan-India BWA licence holder, has already rolled out 4G-backed WiFi services in some parts of Kolkata, Uttar Pradesh (Varanasi) and Gujarat.

“WiFi is clearly an important part of Jio’s 4G strategy, given the usage of high-frequency 2300 MHz band. WiFi could play a critical role in helping Jio to push the adoption of high-speed mobile data services,” said an analyst, who didn’t wish to be named.

In the high-frequency bands or GHz bands, the signal penetration degrades and causes challenges in providing indoor coverage thus, WiFi comes as an efficient and stable technology to offer faster data speeds in an environment where data uptake is picking up rapidly.

“There’s low capital expenditure attached to WiFi hotspots against putting new cell sites, and still can provide high data speeds,” the second person said, adding that both telcos have realised the need for WiFi, and have come in this space aggressively.