30,000 people using Mumbai's free WiFi daily for porn!
Mumbai, the first Indian city to have government Wi-Fi connectivity, now has about three lakh people who access the services daily. Amusingly, 10% of them, or roughly 30,000 people, use it to watch porn! V.K. Gautam, principal secretary of the state information technology (IT) department, takes solace in the fact that the number was still lower than those of other internet service providers.
Many foresaw this problem at the beginning
The Maharashtra government gifted Mumbai its free Wi-Fi project on January 6, just before the civic polls, with 510 hotspots across the city. Another 75 followed; now the total tally stands at 585. But even then, many parents worried their children would use it to access porn. Gautam had said, "We have taken a lot of efforts to ensure people can't access porn sites."
IT department pulls up socks
The IT department has now blocked 38 websites; these have also been added to the list of websites blocked by the Centre's Department of Telecommunications. "The problem is, people won't stop watching pornography… This is a game of cat and mouse, where we block such websites and they keep coming up using different domain names," says Gautam. "(The) process…will go on forever," he adds.
What's next for the government?
"India's largest public Wi-Fi service and one of the largest globally too", according to CM Devendra Fadnavis, is set to be expanded to Pune and Nagpur next. The Mumbai project is estimated to cost the state exchequer Rs. 194cr for the first five years.
