My hometown is southern Indian city of Mysore. In terms of information technology (IT) it was considered a sleepy town. In the recent past, there are many IT developments which is changing Mysore's image. Infosys located its training institute in Mysore. IBM intends to do something in Mysore - it has acquired land in Mysore. A more interesting development is a company called  "WiFiyNet" has installed three access points (hotspots) in the city. WiFiyNet currently provides internet access for a flat rate of  Rs. 750 (about $17) a month. The speed is 128-Kbps. The state government IT department is encouraging deployment of such "Wi-Fi" hot spots across small towns. Already, another town Kushalnagar which 100 is Km away from Mysore has a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Interestingly the cellular phone service providers caused a revolution of "cell phone for the masses" in India. Cell phones have percolated even to the remotest rural areas and impacted on business and society, irreversibly, in many ways. Will Wi-Fi result in "internet access to the masses"? I would take a middle ground here. Use of cell phone and use of computer for internet access are not the same. The latter requires more resources, awareness and training. But, for those techies and computer literates this is a revolution to ride on - is it not wonderful to live in a clean city like Mysore and work for software companies in infrastructure-choked Bangalore? 

Before closing this post, I would like to visit my favorite theme security in Wi-Fi. There are two types of hotspot one is "open hotspot" and the other is "closed hotspot". Open hotspot are open for all wireless users. Closed hotspot use WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) key, in order to connect to it wireless user has to supply the shared WEP key.  WEP uses 40 bit and 128 bit encryption. Higher the key length it is harder to break. 

I am not sure if my hometown Wi-Fi users have started worrying about Wi-Fi security at this point, but at some point in the very near future they will have to.