An online presence is a quintessential driving factor in today’s world. Travellers feel the need of this attendance more earnestly. With the lack of community Wi-Fi, hopping online seems like an uphill task. Maximum Wi-Fi spots are either for office or personal use, which again leaves the people on the go with lesser choices. The team at Access has a different thought process and has put down a service that allows access to neighbouring Wi-Fi hotspots for a traveller.

At Access, a wide Wi-Fi hotspot network is established. The app connects to the local Wi-Fi hotspot and gives an access to anyone who wants to use it. The community of Wi-Fi networks is extensive as it includes cafes, public places in the city and across the nation. The Access community allows the user to hop onto their bandwagon of Wi-Fi hotspots from corner to corner in the city without the requirement of a password.

In dialogue with Jaikishan Jalan, founder and CEO of Access:

Any remarks on the state of Wi-Fi networks in India?

There are about 99.2 million broadband users in India according to TRAI data as of March 2015. But most of these are office and home Wi-Fi or for the personal use only. By the end of 2014, India had only 30,000 commercial Wi-Fi hotspots and virtually no community (Public) hotspots. However, with the focus on “Smart Cities” under the vision of our Prime Minister, we expect the Wi-Fi market to go up to 2 million commercial & community hotspots by 2018. However, every Wi-Fi is an individual system, a network of these Wi-Fi is still missing.

Travel + Wi-Fi – Your comments

Travel and Wi-Fi don’t go well. Wi-Fi is available usually at home and office, or you may know which of your favourite hangout place or café is nearby, who provides high-speed Wi-Fi. The problem starts when one goes on travel, at a new place or city, even within not so known vicinity one does not know where they can access free high-speed Wi-Fi.

What are the problems travellers face?

A few days back I met a vendor. She wanted to give me an online demo of her product. We both were in a not so familiar city; we had to hop two to three places in search of good high-speed Wi-Fi (Free / chargeable). So if there would be services which can tell me where can I get free Wi-Fi near to me, it would be a great idea and if it’s a network, where I even do not need to go through the hassle of passwords and OTP’s, I would love it.

Why is connecting to Wi-Fi important in the age of 3G?

Who wants 3G when Wi-Fi is available? 3G is a good to have, when we are commuting, or on the move, but cannot replace or compete with the price, speed and reliability, that Wi-Fi offers. Many a times in an indoor environment, such as café or a hotel room we do not get appreciable signal of 3G, but Wi-Fi works fantastic.

What are the problems you’re solving and how it impacts the potential plans for the company?

We are trying to solve a problem, we all face every day when we are out of our Wi-Fi comfort zone at our home or office. Many times we have to rely on a mobile network, which is very unreliable considering location variations. We generally have no clue where can we get a free high-speed Wi-Fi around us, even if it’s next lane. We are creating a large network of existing Wi-Fi across the city, in collaboration with local business owners, who already either have Wi-Fi for their personal office use or provide Wi-Fi (protected) for their customers. It will provide seamless, secure connectivity across the networked Wi-Fi without the hassle of passwords and OTP’s.

We are working towards making the whole earth a massive Wi-Fi network. Furthermore, we dream of no dependency on mobile networks at all not even for calling by leveraging this network.

From L to R: Access Founders, Viraat & Jaikaishan Jalan

Access was founded by Jaikishan and Viraat who have more than 7 years of experience in technology space. Jaikishan has in his kitty some companies like Google, Microsoft and has a thorough knowledge in creating scalable software products for consumers. Viraat has over 9 years of experience in signal processing and built a company straight out of college. Both know each other for more than 14 years from IIT Dhanbad where they started their graduation in 2002.

Exclusive Access Traveller Program

Access has announced to support full-time travellers. They are offering to cater 5 full-time travellers by sponsoring them with INR 5000 per month for 6 months. In return Access requires them to share 30 Wi-Fi hotspots per month through Access platform. To learn more about enrollment details, visit here.

Download the app here.

The post In conversation with Jaikishan Jalan, CEO and Co-Founder of Access on how community Wi-Fi space is evolving appeared first on TravHQ.

People love to post photos on Instagram and add check-ins to Facebook while travelling but often connectivity is a challenge. Free public Wi-Fi hotspots offer some relief but not only are they hard to find but also pose security challenges. Along with that, these hotspots generally require the user to sign up using phone numbers. WiFire is a mobile app that aims to address these challenges and allow travellers to easily use free pubic Wi-Fi hotspots.

The team behind WiFire app

WiFire allows its users to discover and connect to free Wi-Fi networks around them. It can automatically notify about the availability of shared networks in the range and can connect without the user having to enter a password. In case of open public Wi-Fi networks, the app automatically inputs the details, collects the OTP and autofills the login page to use the network.

The network of public Wi-Fi hotspots has got a large number of challenges and the WiFire team came up with the app to address them. According to them, finding a reliable Wi-Fi is never as straightforward as it should be and even after finding a network, there are lot more questions about the network. Currently their database has got over 2,500 verified networks spread across airports, restaurants, cafes and other Wi-Fi zones. Users can also submit information about such hotspots to further expand the database and in turn, they earn badges and rewards as incentive.

The app has already seen over 5,000 downloads and is experiencing constant growth as people continue to use the app and share it in their network. The app is gaining traction among both locals and travellers alike. Students and young professionals use it to find Wi-Fi hotspots in their own city while business travellers and tourists use the app on the go. You can easily login to the app using your Google Plus account and the excellent interface makes using it a breeze.

There are other apps that allow users to discover Wi-Fi hotspots in a region but WiFire highly emphasis on the quality of shared hotspots. The verified networks present in their database must have valid password and Google Place ID associated with them so that it can be ensured that they are actual Wi-Fi hotspots at public establishments and not any false hotspots. They also keep cleaning their database to keep any such hotspots should they find their way in somehow.

Another differentiator is the auto-fill OTP feature. Most other apps only allow discovery of networks but WiFire enables the user to skip the log-in process by automating it. It also supports the recently introduced RailWire Wi-Fi networks at multiple railway stations across India.

The WiFire team is working relentlessly on expanding the database to cover even the smallest of cities in India and then they will look at expansion in other markets starting with other Asian countries. They are constantly adding interesting features to their android app and will soon be launching an app for iOS devices as well.

You can download the app for your Android device or find more details on their website.

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