FireFly Networks Limited: A Joint Venture of Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Enabling Digital India with World-class Wi-Fi
The emergence of smart phones and tablets as communication devices of choice has resulted in an exponential increase in the demand for high quality internet access across the world. In India too, with over 34 percent of the population accessing the internet, Wi-Fi is fast becoming an important access technology for the country’s young, aspiring, and always-connected population. Among the various factors contributing to the proliferation of Wi-Fi is the increasing demand for speed, the explosive progress in devices and content eco-systems, and government’s focus on creating a ‘Digital India’. Therefore, providing high quality Wi-Fi connectivity has become indispensable for governments, as well as telcos, ISPs and forward-looking businesses and venues to attract, engage and retain their customers. Established in 2014, FireFly Networks has been focused on creating and managing world-class Wi-Fi Hotspots. With deployments across more than 30 cities, the company helps its partners provide seamless and secure data connectivity over Wi-Fi for all their customers and visitors. FireFly has established a significant presence across all key public Wi-Fi segments such as airports, hospitals, malls, education, corporate parks, and public buildings, etc. The company has also built a passionate team of experts, and a gold-class partner eco-system of renowned OEMs, service-providers, and field-supportpartners.
“FireFly has been single-mindedly focused on creating shared and cost efficient Wi-Fi infrastructure in ‘nomadic’ locations. It is passionate about enabling its client-locations and consumer-facing partners like Airtel and Vodafone to help their customers stay digitally connected in the best way possible,” affirms Raj Sethia, CEO, FireFly Networks Limited. With consumers today seeking reliable and minimum-fuss data access on an anytime-anywhere basis, FireFly strives to meet these requirements through enabling its Hotspot partners to provide universal and non-discriminatory portal-based access to Wi-Fi for all, through a simple authentication process. As a unique proposition, the company also enables eligible mobile data-pack subscribers of Airtel and Vodafone to seamlessly use high-speed Wi-Fi whenever in the Hotspot range, without the need for any manual intervention or OTP based authentication on the same infrastructure.
In order to ensure maximum security and reliability across every layer of its Wi-Fi network, FireFly also leverages the expertise of its global partner ecosystem to deploy the best-in-class access and core network that is stringently monitored. Despite a recent beginning in the segment, FireFly Networks has gained enviable expertise in this domain through its various high profile engagements and partnerships. As an appropriate testament to these capabilities, the company was recently chosen to deploy and manage a Wi-Fi network across two geographic clusters covering 28 airports managed by Airport Authority of India across the country, covering passenger traffic of 150 million per year. Building further on its success, the company now hopes to rapidly spread its network further and deeper across India. In the process, it hopes to play a small but meaningful role in making India truly “Digital”. One Hotspot at a time!
In order to ensure maximum security and reliability across every layer of its Wi-Fi network, FireFly also leverages the expertise of its global partner ecosystem to deploy the best-in-class access and core network that is stringently monitored. Despite a recent beginning in the segment, FireFly Networks has gained enviable expertise in this domain through its various high profile engagements and partnerships. As an appropriate testament to these capabilities, the company was recently chosen to deploy and manage a Wi-Fi network across two geographic clusters covering 28 airports managed by Airport Authority of India across the country, covering passenger traffic of 150 million per year. Building further on its success, the company now hopes to rapidly spread its network further and deeper across India. In the process, it hopes to play a small but meaningful role in making India truly “Digital”. One Hotspot at a time!
