Nigeria will be the first African country to receive Google’s free public Wi-Fi service, this according to a recent announcement by the U.S technology firm.
The initiative will connect millions of users to 200 Wi-Fi hot spots across Nigeria’s five states within one year.
The country will join 4 other countries; India, Indonesia, Mexico and Thailand where the service has already launched.
Unlike Kenya’s deployment of project loon in rural areas, where balloons are released in the stratosphere to provide internet in areas with no to little infrastructure, Google will partner with local service providers to provide infrastructure and locations while it will offer a cloud based platform and devices to provide and manage hot spots at public places such as colleges, malls, markets and bus stations.
Google is looking to get its revenue from local advertising/ paid services on the login portal and share the revenues with technical partners.
Users will be able to experience 30 Mbps exceeding the 1.86 Mbps average internet speed according to a global broadband speed league by UK analytics firm Cable.
“We are rolling out the service in Lagos today but the plan is to quickly expand to other locations,” Anjali Joshi, Google’s Vice President for Product Management, told Reuters.
