Free Wi-Fi on 100 key trains by year-end

In what can be called as a good news for passengers, around 100 trains, including Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and the Mumbai suburban service, would have free Wi-Fi by the year end. The railways ministry is in the process of identifying other trains for the particular service.

Sources in the ministry of railways said RailTel has already floated a ‘request for proposal’ or tender for the project, owned by Indian Railways. The company focuses on providing broadband and virtual private network (VPN) services.

Trials have already been conducted on the Howrah-New Delhi, Rajdhani Express for implementing the scheme, the sources added. The railways has already announced its partnership with the tech giant Google to provide free Wi-Fi services to 400 railway stations across the country. In January 2016, Mumbai central station became the first railway station in the country to have the facility. And now, the service has been extended to 22 more railway stations.

Nearly two million Indians are using high-speed Wi-Fi services at 23 railway stations across the country that Google provided as part of its project.

Google’s free Wi-Fi is capped at one-hour per user, but there is no cap on volume of data for now.

Since the first station, Mumbai Central, in January 2016, the other stations which Google has connected include Pune, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Patna, Ernakulam Junction and Vishakhapatnam Central. The company initially rolled out the network at four of India’s largest stations - Sealdah, Lucknow Junction, Lucknow City and Gorakhpur Junction. Around100,000 users connect to the network within a week of launch at Mumbai Central. Interestingly, a recent report said that a majority of people used free Wi-Fi at the Patna railway station to log onto porn sites. After Patna, Jaipur railway station is second to use internet search, followed by Bengaluru and New Delhi.