Hyd to become first fully Wi-Fi enabled Metro city

• Taking a leaf out of cities like Mountain View and Houston
• Kakinada, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati and Anathapur to be developed as IT hubs in AP

Hyderabad: In a bid to make Hyderabad the first fully Wi-Fi enabled metro city in the country, Telangana Government is holding talks with various telecom service providers to offer the services.

The state's Information Technology Minister, K T Rama Rao, told reporters in New Delhi that steps were being taken to offer Wi-Fi services across greater Hyderabad metropolitan area. “We are taking a leaf out of cities like Mountain View and Houston for offering Wi-Fi services. We are speaking to service providers," he said, adding that they were also looking at Ahmedabad and Bangalore where Wi-Fi services were available on a limited basis.

KTR was in New Delhi to attend the States IT ministers’ conference called by Union Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad. Asked whether any time line has been set for it, Rao said they were working to have it at the earliest but no deadline has been fixed as yet. Hyderabad city, which has a population of 12 million, is one of the major IT hubs in the country. "We want to offer Wi-Fi services to enable more citizen services," he said.

The AP minister for IT P Raghunatha Reddy who also spoke to the media said the AP government would unleash an IT revolution across Andhra Pradesh. Noting that the revenue from IT in residual Andhra Pradesh was only around Rs 1,500 crore after bifurcation, Reddy said the state government had chosen the cities such as Kakinada, Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Tirupati and Ananthapur to be developed as new IT growth engines. "We will develop IT sector in all the regions of Andhra Pradesh," he told reporters here. IT revenue from undivided Andhra Pradesh was about Rs 65,000 crore, the Minister added.