Indian Railways, RailTel and Google have launched free WiFi in four of India’s largest stations – Sealdah, Lucknow Jn, Lucknow and Gorakhpur Jn. With these stations RailWire is now available across 19 stations in India.
It was launched at the Mumbai Central station earlier this year and was expanded to 9 more train stations in April. It was launched in Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh), Kachiguda (Telangana) & Raipur (Chhattisgarh) last month.
Google said that 1.5 million Indians are accessing RailWire Wi-Fi in these stations. It also said that the average consumption per user on the network is 15 times the data they would consume on a 3G pack in a day.”
Google already said that 100 stations will get free WiFi by the end of 2016, connecting more than 10 million people who pass through every day. The project will be eventually rolled out to cover 400 train stations across India.
Regarding the expansion of RailWire project, Google India said:
With this project, our objective is to create abundant broadband access to millions of Indians who’re currently not online or are using it in limited capacity to significantly enhance the benefits and productivity of the Internet. While we’re only at approximately 20% of the roll out schedule for this year, the response has been phenomenal.