Last year, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of giant search engine Google announced free WiFi at several railway station in India and earlier this year the free service was successfully launched at the Mumbai central station and now Google has also added Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Ernakulum Jn (Kochi) and Vishakhapatnam.
Head of Access Project Google India, Gulzar Azad said, ““The network is now live in ten key stations across the country and we are scaling up our efforts to roll out the network quickly to cover some of smaller stations where connectivity is much more limited. As internet adoption grows in India, easy and affordable access to high-speed networks is the real need of the hour,”
He said that the team is sure to connect 1.5 million users in the country through providing free WiFi access on these 10 major railway stations of the country. Google claims that the surfing speed would be enough to allow the users’ stream the high definition videos on various websites. Also, it is planning to expand this free WiFi network to a total of 100 railway stations covering and connecting 10 million people and if done this would be the largest WiFi network the country ever had.
Talking about the future plans, Azad added, “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 network connectivity in the country.”
Not just this, Google further plans to make it the largest WiFi network in the world by expanding it to 400 railway stations in the country working with Railtel and other partners. On this, the Managing Director and the Chairman of Railtel said, “As outlined by the Hon’ble minister Shri Suresh Prabhu – modernising and improving the amenities available to passengers of Indian Railways is big part of our focus. And 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 to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, in the future.”
