FREE WIFI IS GREAT—IF IT ACTUALLY WORKS
The Indian government recently announced that it plans to offer free WiFi to 1,050 villages across India as part of a pilot project called Digital Village. This is good news indeed, not just for residents of each village, but for visitors to the village and even for people driving on roads nearby. Large signs will draw them to the village, signs that will hopefully say, “Free WiFi—and it really works!”
If you’ve used free WiFi, even in America, you know that it can be really slow, especially in places where many people are accessing it, such as airports and malls. Sometimes you have to enter your email address and agree to receive marketing offers in exchange for WiFi that’s not as free as you had hoped.
You also have to click a button, saying that you agree to their terms and conditions, even though you haven’t bothered to read them, haven’t even scanned them to see if there’s a paragraph that says, “In exchange for free WIFI, I agree to give airport authorities the right to view all photos stored on my cellphone and post the most embarrassing ones on video screens around the airport.”
The residents of those 1,050 villages will need to be patient when accessing their free WiFi. It probably won’t be fast, but it will be better than no WiFi.
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
[Comments? Contributions? We would love to hear from you about Chai Time. If you have contributions, please email us at melvin@melvindurai.com. We welcome jokes, quotes, online clips, and more.]
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