VietNamNet Bridge - With total area of over 2,000 square meters, it would take about VND500 billion to provide free wi-fi throughout HCMC, experts have estimated.

 

HCMC’s Vice Mayor Tran Vinh Tuyen at a meeting with the HCMC Tourism Department said that a Singaporean firm suggested providing free wi-fi throughout the city to help residents and tourists more easily check information. It would also facilitate the e-government plan the city is implementing.

To have mobile phones or laptops witj wi-fi connection, there must be a wi-fi transmitting device which could be either Access Point (AP) or router AP.

An outdoor AP will be needed for outdoor wi-fi connection. In general, an outdoor AP has the coverage of between 50 and 300 meters in radius.

An expert said that the coverage of 150-200 meters would be reasonable, because within the radius, mobile devices cannot connect. If not, phones would still be able to detect wi-fi wave, but may not have internet connection.

With total area of over 2,000 square meters, it would take about VND500 billion to provide free wi-fi throughout HCMC, experts have estimated.

Theoretically, if one AP could cover within a 200 meter circle, the coverage area would be 125,600 square meters, equivalent to 0.1256 square kilometers. This means that to cover the entire district 1 with wi-fi which has the area of 7.73 square kilometers, 73 APs would be needed.

And to cover all the districts in HCMC with wi-fi, 16,680 APs would be needed.

If noting that an AP is now priced at VND28-30 million, it would cost VND1.86 billion to cover district 1 with wi-fi, while the figure would be VND500 billion for the entire HCMC.

The expense on AP is believed to be the major expense item. HCMC authorities will also have to pay for the installation, the expenses for cables and transmission line leasing fees.

The expert noted that the real cost could be lower if the investor can negotiate with equipment suppliers on discounts, or install APs only in important places in every district.

Buu Dien quoted its source from a supplier now joining the bid to provide APs to the Singaporean company as saying that the company plans to cover wifi in some key districts first and hire Vietnamese companies to do the installation. The profit is expected to come from ads.

In principle, it is not difficult to develop infrastructure items for free wi-fi coverage in HCMC. However, a question has been raised if the bandwidth speed is high enough to allow many people to use wi-fi concurrently. 

A mobile phone needs a capacity of 3-4 MB to read information. If 100 mobile phones use wi-fi in the same place with the same AP, the download capacity will be high, which will require wide bandwidth.

Buu Dien