Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore   

Wi-Fi facility launched at Coimbatore Airport

Staff Reporter

Major airports in State have Internet connectivity

GOING HI-TECH: The Coimbatore Airport Director, C. Vijaykumar (second from right) and N.B. Mathur, General Manager, Information Technology of the Airports Authority of India (far right) trying to access Internet through Wireless Fidelity facility lau nched by BSNL, Coimbatore, at the airport on Monday. The Principal General Manager, BSNL, Coimbatore, A.S. Egaya (far left) looks on. — Photo: S. Siva Saravanan

Coimbatore: To provide Internet connectivity for air travellers who carry their laptops while on travel, the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL), Coimbatore, on Monday launched Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) facility at the Coimbatore Airport.

The Airport Director, C. Vijaykumar and N.B. Mathur, General Manager, Information Technology of the Airports Authority of India (AAI), inaugurated the facility in the presence of Principal General Manager, BSNL, A.S. Egaya.

The Union Minister for Communications, Dayanidhi Maran, inaugurated the facility at Madurai Airport. The inauguration of the facility was conducted simultaneously at Coimbatore and Tiruchirapalli airports. Chennai Airport already has the facility. With this, all the major airports in Tamil Nadu have Internet connectivity for passengers while waiting for their flights.

Mr. Vijaykumar pointed out that though every effort was being made to ensure that flights were operated on time without any delay, even the minimum time that the air travellers spent at the arrival and departure lounges should be made comfortable. With this facility, they can stay connected with their home and office, he said.

At four places

The Wi-Fi hotspot enables an Internet user to get connected to the local area network through his laptop. Mr. Egaya said that it had been proposed to install Wi-Fi hot spots at four important locations in the city of which the first one was inaugurated on Monday. The other spots could be railway station (depending on the number of persons using laptops and Internet) or even major hotels in the city. Even educational institutions could seek installation of the same. At the airport, a Gateway switch and three access points had been installed at an outlay of Rs. 50,000-plus.

These unwired access points would enable the Internet user to get hooked to the local area network without having to run around for plugging it to some phone socket.

A passenger could reach the access points with laptop from the arrival and departure lounges or even from the Conference Hall. Twenty persons can access the facility simultaneously at any given time and if there was additional demand, the capacity could be increased by installing additional access points. If more persons used it at the same time, there would not be any congestion but they would end up sharing the speed or bandwidth, Mr. Egaya pointed out.

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