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Why you would ever want to surf the Internet from a shikara on Kashmir's picturesque Dal Lake, I'm not sure, but know that you could if you wanted to. Dal Lake is the world's first 'Wi-Fi-enabled lake' and a tourist with a laptop out in a shikara can share this moment with someone back home. Thanks to Dax Networks, ISP iPeaks, and the Jammu and Kashmir Department of Tourism, Dal Lake is one of the more remote spots in the world to have wireless connectivity. Right along with a 'Wi-Fied' cybercafé at the Mount Everest base camp at an altitude of 5,300 metres and a remote Laos village where residents connect wirelessly to a radio network through bicycle-powered, custom-built computers.

For the last one year, India has been warming up to Wi-Fi just the tiniest bit with hotspots coming up here and there. Practically all the big technology companies have been trying out a variety of showcase, proof-of-concept projects to lay the ground for the deployment of Wi-Fi and connectivity in public places, businesses and homes. More significantly, a number of pilot projects using Wi-Fi to take connectivity to 'the masses' and to rural India are under way.

Intel, globally one of the most active proponents of wireless, has been trying to accelerate Wi-Fi adoption in India. By 2004, Intel wants to facilitate 1,000 hotspots here - in offices, cafés, hotels and college campuses. The idea is to get people to experience what it is like to be connected wherever they go. And as computing and communication technologies become one, it could boost productivity and allow the connected individual to do a variety of things. But it is useless to have wireless access unless you have devices that can do something with that access. So Intel has asked vendors to sell Centrino-based notebooks: with lower power consumption, they're Wi-Fi ready and optimised for mobility without compromising on performance. So now, Wi-Fi will come packaged with the new notebooks.

You'll find the news peppered with reports of places - airports (the international departure lounges in Chennai and Delhi), hotels (with five-star access rates), educational institutions - that have been Wi-Fi enabled. In Bangalore, Sify has been involved with Wi-Fi deployment for high-speed Net access. Wireless access is also available to homes. The products are there and, gradually, the services will follow. Recently, Bharti Infotel announced the launch of its Wi-Fi service over DSL. So, in addition to the fashionable always-on-broadband connects, you also have mobility. The Bharti package has a DSL modem with Wi-Fi and a Wi-Fi card for a laptop at Rs 14,995 (their broadband home packages come for Rs 550-995 a month). Wireless products for the home and for small office set-ups have already been around from vendors like D-Link, Dax and Apple. Notebooks have also caught on lately and the number of takers for Wi-Fi could go up.

But many factors have been keeping the revolution from happening. Researchers think India is slow to take to Wi-Fi. But you can't take to something you haven't experienced and the density of hotspots is low. Wireless is far more than just a lack of wires. It's one possible solution to keeping you connected wherever you go, almost like cellphones. It's a flexible way to take work, entertainment, information and communication with you. It's up to the tech firms to convey the benefits strongly enough. Unfortunately, the radio spectrum which Wi-Fi uses was strictly regulated by the government. They finally 'deregulated' the oldest standard 802.11b, but for indoor use only. If you want to use it outdoors, you'll have to get a licence.

Now the government is talking about delicensing 802.11g and 802.11a. It says it has an open mind and knows what the penetration of Wi-Fi technology could do for the country and is trying to sort out issues about deregulating the spectrum. So far, though, it's done a great job of killing Wi-Fi in India.