By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
By far the largest number of people on this Planet live in so-called ’emerging markets’ – and such communities need Internet connectivity more than ever before to drive socio-economic growth and quality of life. Now Indio Networks – our brand new Wi-Fi NOW Partner for Affordable Wi-Fi – is taking solid aim at delivering the tools to deploy affordable Wi-Fi everywhere including for underserved communities in Western economies.
The global pre-requisite for the creation of jobs, education, health, business growth, and quality of life in general is access to information and digital services. And even as Facebook Express WiFi as well as Google Station WiFi projects are both now sadly defunct, this doesn’t mean that the issue of delivering affordable connectivity in emerging markets has been resolved. In fact, the need is great than ever. And for a big part of the market, Wi-Fi network equipment and platforms are still beyond reach.
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“The thick end of the population and economic pyramid needs connectivity more than ever and they are underserved because most mainstream Wi-Fi equipment brands as well as software platforms are out of reach of this very large market segment. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Indio Networks is on a mission to deliver Wi-Fi to anyone who needs it – and this is a very large number of communities worldwide, even in the West,” says Rishi Ghare, founder & CEO of Indio Networks.
Indio Networks has been around since 2005 and has grown from having carved out a succesful business through delivery of Wi-Fi service management and hotspot platforms to a host of venue types and commercial franchises. Today the company is leading end-to-end Wi-Fi delivery projects in Africa, India, and Latin America. To name a few the company has installed more than 1,000 hotspots in Bangladesh, 500 satellite-based hotspots in the DRC, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria, more than 200 so called ‘digital plazas’ in Mozambique, and dozens of community Wi-Fi projects in South Africa.
The essence of the Indio Networks offering is a vendor-agnostic service management platform and TIP OpenWiFi-compliant low-cost AP hardware, Rishi Ghare says.
“Most of the world doesn’t need an endless list of sophisticated enterprise-grade features and services. Instead by far most communities are well served with platforms and hardware that is designed with affordability and robustness in mind. This is what we like to call value-based innovation: Innovation that delivers the right subset of high-value services at a price point within reach of most of the world’s economies,” Rishi Ghare says.
At Wi-Fi NOW we will be working with Indio Networks to showcase and promote Indio’s capabilities and achievements as a leading provider of affordable Wi-Fi. “We’ve always had a soft spot for working with affordable connectivity vendors and projects. It is incredibly rewarding to experience how something we take for granted in the affluent West can massively improve the lives underserved communities across the world. We’re delighted to welcome Indio Networks as our partner,” says Claus Hetting, CEO & Chairman of Wi-Fi NOW.
Watch this space for much more information on Indio Networks.
/Claus.
