India’s Ozone provides public wi-fi – and it just got acquired by a British telco

British telco New Call today announced that it acquired India’s public wi-fi provider Ozone Networks. The size of the deal remains undisclosed.

Ozone was launched in 2008 by computer science engineer Bobby Sarin. The startup deployed 2,000 public wi-fi hotspots in educational institutions, hospitals, and hotels across major cities of India. Some of them include McDonalds, Costa Coffee, Oberoi hotels, Barista coffee, Mumbai airport, Apollo hospitals, and Haus Kaus village. It claims 2.5 million people connect to Ozone hotspots every month.

New Call, which also has an interest in emerging markets, claims to be the second largest VoIP player in the Middle East. Last year it acquired Nimbuzz, an instant messaging platform boasting 210 million users. It is slated to invest US$100 million in acquiring startups in India. The telco is in talks with more than a dozen Indian startups.

“Public wi-fi is an affordable way for many people in India to access the internet, who might otherwise be excluded. Ozone Networks is connecting millions of consumers each month to the internet and is already positioned as a key enabler for digital India,” says New Call Telecom CEO Nigel Eastwood.

Connected India

Ozone secured a seed round of funding in 2008 from New York-based Access Industries whose portfolio includes global telecom, media and television investments, chemicals, real estate, and the commodity business.

Ozone competes with some large telcos like Bharti Airtel, Tata Teleservices, and Idea Cellular, which have also been in the wi-fi hub business.

At present, there are about 30,000 commercial wi-fi hotspots in India – across 30 municipalities and 105 airports. By 2018, India is predicted to have about two million wi-fi hotspots, with around 400 municipalities likely to deploy wi-fi hotspots.