On World Wi-Fi Day 2025, at the Broadband India Forum Conference, critical voices in digital development came together to emphasise one powerful idea: digital access must lead to meaningful online transactions. This chpater of TypeRight is on DEF's suggestions in the conference.

When over 4 billion people globally remain unconnected, World Wi-Fi Day on the twentieth of June is an initiative that seeks to emphasise the role and importance of Wi-Fi in bridging this digital divide. An initiative by the Wireless Broadband Alliance, of which India's Broadband India Forum is a member. The Digital Empowerment Foundation works with BIF on aspects of inclusive broadband access.

This year’s Wi-Fi Day celebrations are themed: “Transforming India, Innovating for the World.”

Assuming online transactions as the meaningful access benchmark, the onus lies in ensuring that the creation of Wi-Fi clusters and locations leads to genuine digital empowerment. The example of Chanderi from ten years ago demonstrates that meaningful access goes beyond simply providing Wi-Fi; it enables people to conduct transactions, consult with doctors, apply for jobs, and perform a wide range of activities online without buffering or technological barriers.

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Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) through its flagship programme Chanderiyaan has been demonstrating the power of digital intervention to improve the financial status of traditional artisans of Chanderi in Madhya Pradesh and creating a model for traditional-skill based clusters for over 10 years now.

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Apart from these direct economic gains to the weaver community in Chanderi, the W4C mesh network has helped provide Wi-Fi connections to all the 13 schools in the area and all of them now have computer labs. Today, almost the entire weaving community in Chanderi is digitally literate. Under the W2E2 project women are becoming digitally literate and are being trained to become social entrepreneurs. The project will also try to help these trained women to set up their own businesses.

There was no health care facility in the area. Now, a Wi-Fi enabled health centre has come up that has a basic telemedicine kit. The centre is linked to the Ashoknagar district hospital, some 50 kilometres away, and patients are able to consult doctors in the hospital at fixed times.

Thanks to digital literacy and empowerment, Chanderi has changed in every way, benefitting the entire community of 40,000 people.

DEF's Osama Manzar proposed something similar at the conference.

India, a vast country with around 600 GI locations, has the potential to create 600 GI cities through robust Wi-Fi infrastructure. Similarly, the 545 weaving clusters could be transformed into Wi-Fi-enabled cities, leveraging strong digital public infrastructure and hyper-local data centers. The focus should shift from merely providing connectivity to ensuring that Wi-Fi serves as a foundation for digital inclusion, allowing people to transact, study, and access services online seamlessly.

With cabinet approval for significant last-mile Wi-Fi initiatives, there is a need to integrate these efforts into meaningful access for various clusters, rather than targeting individual institutions. DEF's experience from the Wireless4Communities project at Chanderi and elsewhere, and our hand in pioneering initiatives that formalised into the PM-WANI shows that this is possible if enough attention and work is put in.

Union Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia supported this. He says that we now stand as a global leader in digital transactions, responsible for 46% of the world’s digital transactions-

"We talked about transactions. Osama talked about transactions. Today, you'll be amazed—46% of the digital transactions in the world happen in India. Forty-six percent in one country. Not the USA, not all of Europe, not China—46% in India."

If previously it was access to capital or infrastructure that determined opportunity, today that has shifted to access to information - this is what drives progress, entrepreneurship, and inclusion. The minister also highlighted India’s demographic advantage, with a youthful population primed for rapid technological adoption, and stressed that the government’s role is to facilitate rather than regulate, focusing on customer needs and ensuring that every citizen can access digital opportunities.

The country has cheaper data than most of the world, at around just 9 rupees per GB, and initiatives like BharatNet are expected to drive this down even more. This is important to note because even with one of the world's cheapest rates, data still remains costly for a large section of the population. This is in addition to infrastructural challenges.

DEF is optimistic about government support in attempting to transform our 600 GI destinations into Wi-Fi-powered rural cities and converting our 545 weaving clusters into 'Wi-Fi weaver towns,' in the spirit of World Wi-Fi Day. Present policies over the past two decades, like allowing public data offices to access fiber connections, enabling shared backhaul for seamless networks, supporting seamless roaming so users can stay connected nationwide, spectrum reforms like de-licensing the 6 GHz band, and the promotion of satellite connectivity for remote areas are some of the efforts in the right direction. With a little more push, we could work towards building the infrastructure to realise the true potential of our demographic dividend- a population of 1.4 billion, with nearly 70% under the age of 35.

Watch the full inaugural event here:

Read about DEF's role in the PMWANI scheme here:

PM-WANI

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