West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee put Kolkata's Park Street on the WiFi highway.
Mamata Banerjee is already big on Facebook and Twitter. But now she has decided to go WiFi and take all of Kolkata with her. On Thursday evening, the West Bengal chief minister put Kolkata's Park Street on the WiFi highway. All of Kolkata will have WiFi by April end, making the City of Joy the first WiFi enabled metro in India.
"I am proud to say Kolkata will be the first WiFi city in the world," Ms Banerjee said, before correcting herself and adding, "in the country. After the launch, Kolkata will also be a knowledge hub in the world."
The chief minister was also politically correct about the urban-rural digital divide. She announced that she had asked the chief secretary to explore how soon WiFi could be provided in the district towns too.
A young crowd had gathered from colleges at Park Street for the launch. For them, the big thing was the WiFi service was expected to be free. That's what Ms Banerjee had said when she first announced the project on January 28.
"We walk into restaurants and the first thing we ask is, is there free WiFi. Now we won't have to anymore," said Yashovardhan Dalmia, a college student. His friend said, "For our generation, that's the big thing, that it is going to be free."
However, there is some fine print behind the "free". Reliance Jio Infocomm, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Limited, which is behind the WiFi-ing of Kolkata, said in a press release, "Initially the service will be offered at no cost subject to fair usage for individual customers."
For the moment though the mood is congratulatory. Ms Banerjee was the first to use the WiFi to tweet, "All my WiFi friends. I am tweeting using WiFi Kolkata. So proud to be first WiFi metro city in India. Congratulations to all."
And then, on stage, the chief minister, finance minister, mayor, police commissioner and a host of other dignitaries took a joint selfie. Trinamool MP Derek O'Brien coined a new term on the occasion for the "inclusive" selfie: a "groupfie".