Being world’s largest rail network, Indian Railways are used by more than 8 billion people every year. Such large number of potential internet users coupled with low connectivity at most of the places has fueled the need for the free Wi-Fi. This need was identified but none other than Google.
It was in 2015, when Google’s head Sundar Pichai promised the availability of free Wi-Fi at 100 railway stations across India. The first phase of the project is already complete and it is about to enter phase 2. In the first phase of the project, Google has implemented free Wi-Fi in 23 stations so far. These include Bhubaneswar, Mumbai Central, Pune, Bhopal, Ernakulum Junction, Ranchi, Vijayawada, Raipur, Kacheguda, Vishakhapatnam, Jaipur, Guwahati, Patna, Ujjain, Allahabad and Chennai Central.
Working in partnership with the Indian Railways and RailTel to bring high-speed internet access to millions of Indians travelling through India’s top railway stations, chief of the global giant, Sundar Pichai said, “Already two million people logging in every month and they are using as much as 15 times the data they would otherwise use in a full-day on their cellular networks”.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said his company would continue to work with Indian Railways to cover more railway stations in order to reach the 100 mark by the end of this year.
According to government data, India has 342.65 million subscribers as of March 2016 with majority users using cellular networks. Bharti Airtel has 90.53 million Internet subscribers while Vodafone, Idea Cellular and Reliance had 67.55 million, 44.03 million and 39 million users, respectively. State-run BSNL had 34 million Internet subscribers on its network.
“Mobile phones have changed the way people consume information. Our investment in mobile underlines everything we do… (from) search and YouTube to Android and advertising. Mobile is the engine that drives everything” Pichai said on the sidelines of Alphabet’s second quarter earnings call where the company reported profits in ads.
Google has already shortlisted top 100 railway stations through which nearly 10 million people pass through. The fact that the stations are a point of transit, the people who get a chance to experience the high-speed Wi-Fi while waiting for their train to arrive is nothing less than revolution. Every station is backed by a 1Gbps plus backhaul through the fiber. Also there would be multiple access points for the users that would help in achieving a better consistency with low latency. Using Wifi Internet, People can access or visit on our website and they can give Online Food Order in Train.