The Hindu         06.01.2015  

Major city centres to go Wi-Fi in April

Ten major city centres will have public Wi-Fi shortly.

Kochi Corporation, in association with the public sector telecom company, BSNL, will offer the facility at Fort Kochi, Mattanchery, Marine Drive, High Court, Subash Park, Main Office of the Kochi Corporation, Jos Junction, Vyttila Mobility Hub, Edappally Junction and Kaloor in the first phase. The facility will be available free for 15 minutes a day for one month.

The free offer will be extended depending on the traffic and demand of the customers.

The telecom company will create 10 access points for extending the service. For availing of the facility, one needs to create a password and user ID using a valid mobile phone number, said G. Muralidharan, Principal General Manager, BSNL, Ernakulam.

Though the tariff for using the facility has not been finalised, it will come cheap. It will cost at least by 30 per cent less than the internet charges levied for wired connections and mobile phones, he said.

The scheme is part of the efforts of the Kochi Corporation to make Kochi a Wi-Fi city, said Mayor Tony Chammany.

The infrastructure facilities of the Kochi Corporation will be made available for the telecom company for the purpose.

According to the BSNL official, Wi-Fi will be available at a radius of 300 metres from the access points and a bandwidth 10 Mbps will be available for the customers. Customers can use the facility by top up coupons or by online purchases.

The Wi-Fi zones will become fully operational by March. The general public can access the facility from April, he said.

The towers for offering the facility will be placed at a height of around 10 metres and there would not be any radiation hazards, he said.

Mr. Chammany claimed that Kochi was the first city to provide Wi-Fi facility over a larger area. The proposal will be placed before the Kochi Corporation Council for approval.

Deputy Mayor B. Bhadra and senior officials of the Kochi Corporation were also present at the press conference.

The facility will be available free for 15 minutes a day for one month and will be extended  depending on the demand.

The Hindu        31.12.2014  

Mangaluru to get SMS alerts under new water billing system

Water consumers in Mangaluru city will get automated SMS alerts on bill amount as a new private agency is set to take over water billing of Mangaluru City Corporation from the New Year. Though the agency, MN Compu Solutions, would take over from January, it would take at least a month for the consumers to receive SMS alerts in phases, sources in the civic body told The Hindu here on Tuesday.

But all consumers would get the alerts by May, they said and added that the agency was issued with the work order on December 20.

They said that if water meters were not functioning, consumers would get the alert saying “meter not reading”. If they did not respond to get them repaired or install a new meter within a week, a remainder would be sent on their cellphones thereafter.

The selection of the new agency would be dearer to the corporation than earlier. If the corporation paid Rs. 7.25 per bill, now it would have to pay Rs. 9 per bill to the new agency. Officials in the civic body justified it stating that new features have been added under the new contract system. It, in addition to SMS alerts and remainders, has a software-linked system to assess the consumption of water by each connection on quarterly basis. In addition, there is a system to impose fine on the agency, if it failed to issue bill to any connection without any issues (disputes).

The existing contract system, which was more than three years old, did not have these features, they said.

According to the data available with the corporation, it had 81,527 water connections against 1.10 lakh registered property. But the number of water connections need not match with the number of property. It is because, for example, many apartments, though had many flats, had one or two water supply connections. For example, if an apartment had 20 flats (considered as registered property), it would have only one water connection.

The new agency would conduct a survey of all water connections for four months from January and maintain the data. It was based on the number of property registered.

Meanwhile, Sudhir Shetty Kannur, a councillor, alleged that some areas have not received water bills for the past eight months and some new apartments were not being issued with the bills as the system of contract is in the transition stage.