Google and Indian Railways internet service arm Railtel launched free high-speed public wi-fi service at nine railway Stations across India.
Google with collaboration with Railtel has launched its free wi-fi service in 10 railway stations across India. These are Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Ernakulam Jn (Kochi), Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Mumbai Central, Pune, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, and Vishakhapatnam.
The Company stated the service, which is built over the fibre network of Raitel, is designed to offer a high-speed broadband experience to users. The company added it is committed to working with 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.
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 network connectivity in the country,” said Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.
RailTel owns a pan-India optic fibre network exclusively on the railway track. It has laid out over 45,000 km of optic fibre network across the country, which Google looks to utilize for its WiFi.
The network is built for a wide coverage and high capacity usage, unlike a typical WiFi hotspot which offers connectivity in the limited area. As per the plan, RailTel will be the ISP while Google will provide the wireless area network (WAN) and set up points of access at platforms.