KOCHI: Indian Railway’s Railtel, which provides Internet services as RailWire via its extensive fibre network along with Google, on Friday announced the launch of free high-speed public Wi-Fi services at Ernakulam Junction Railway Station in Kochi. This will benefit over 1.3 lakh visitors daily. With this launch, Google has successfully rolled out public Wi-Fi services across ten key Railway Stations now, enabling access to over 1.5 million Indians every day.
Starting with its first launch at Mumbai Central earlier this year, the list of stations now offering public Wi-Fi services includes Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Ernakulam Junction (Kochi) and Vishakhapatnam. The service will be formally inaugurated by Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu soon.
The service built over the fibre network of Railtel is designed to offer high speed broadband experience to users. Travellers passing through these stations will now be able to easily stream a high definition video, research their destination, download a book or a new game for their journey. Google is committed to working with the Indian Railways and Railtel to deliver high-speed Wi-Fi network that will be available to 10 million Indians a day by the end of the year, covering 100 of the busiest train stations in India. The project will be eventually rolled out to cover 400 train stations across India.
“With the addition of Ernakulam Jn Railway Station, the network is now live in ten stations across the country and we are scaling up our efforts to roll out quickly to cover some of the smaller stations where connectivity is much more limited. With 100 stations live, this project will be the largest publicly accessible high speed Wi-Fi network in the country, but our real hope is that this project will set new benchmarks in delivering reliable and consistent connectivity in the country,” said Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.
Chairman and MD of Railtel R K Bahuguna said, “We are very proud to say that Indian Railways has taken the lead to offer the best Wi-Fi network experience available to passengers today in the country. And while the service will be free for a reasonable amount of time, our long-term goal is to make this project self-sustainable.”