Govt discontinues free WiFi service across Punjab

LAHORE: Citing lack of funds, the Punjab government has terminated free WiFi services being provided to the people in different cities across the province.

“The project was started in association with the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL), but the government has failed to pay dues worth over Rs150 million,” sources in the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) said.

They added that another Rs190 million was needed to keep the service running, however, the government has discontinued the project terming it as a “burden on the exchequer”.

“No funds have been allocated for the project in the budget either,” sources said and added that the authorities concerned were also planning to sack the project employees.

Meanwhile, people, especially students of public sector universities, have expressed disappointment over the government’s decision. “Free WiFi helped us in meeting our assignment deadlines even if our department did not have a working internet connection, which is quite often,” a student of Government College University (GCU) Lahore said.

Travelers too have been left irked by the decision as they say the service enabled them to easily communicate with their family members from the bus stands or the railway station.

The PITB in 2017 had installed WiFi routers in about 250 locations, including metro stations, educational institutions, the railway station and other public spaces of Lahore.

Users were authenticated by their ID and mobile numbers, after which they received a code via SMS to connect to the internet. With the hotpots gaining popularity among the citizens, data hogging was avoided by making the internet subscription time-barred.

Video streaming and downloading were banned in order to maintain a positive usage of these facilities whereas time and location logs were maintained for security purposes.

Each hotspot has a screen which displayed a total number of users connected, bandwidth and usage statistics.

The project was later extended to Rawalpindi and Multan as well.