Indian Railways, RailTel and Google today launched free WiFi at the Mumbai Central station, as expected. “The Wi-Fi will be entirely free to start and the long-term goal will be making this self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, in the future,” said Google.
“Also, to make sure that a few people spending all day in the station downloading lots of big files don’t slow down the network for everyone, users might notice a drop in speed after their first hour on the network. Most people should still be able to do the things they’ll want to do online,” added Google.
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To access the internet with RailWire, you need to connect to RailWire network from your WiFi settings, go to railwire.co.in from your browser, enter your mobile number in the WiFi login screen and request for OTP SMS. Once you have received the 4-digit OTP code, enter it in the login screen and press ‘Done’. You will see a checkmark and will be connected.
Google already said that 100 more stations will be operational by the end of 2016, connecting more than 10 million people who pass through every day. Today it said that Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur and Ranchi will be the next stations that will get free WiFi.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbyjhUdQ9fg
Commenting on the launch, Chairman and Managing Director of Railtel Shri R. K. Bahuguna of Railtel said:
Our intent was to fulfill Indian Railway’s vision of providing Railway passengers access to high speed Internet through our Optical fiber communication network. Affordable smartphones have made it possible for the common men to experience the power of Internet. With our partnership with Google, we are very confident of rolling out a robust, scalable service at Railway stations in the near future.
Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google South East Asia and India said:
We’re delighted to launch India’s first high speed public Wi-Fi service in partnership with Indian Railways. Bringing affordable Internet access to millions of people is an important part of making the Internet both easily accessible and useful for more than 300 million Indians who are already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not. By end of this year over 10 million people will be able to enjoy this experience at 100 stations spread across the country. I would like to thank the Indian Railways for their support and vision to provide a world class high speed public Wi-Fi network at the stations.
Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India, said:
We’ve focussed on delivering a network that is at par with the high speed public Wi-Fi network that is available to users in developed countries. The network is built for wide coverage and high capacity usage unlike a typical Wi-Fi hotspot which offers connectivity in limited area and poor experience. This network will extend to cover both long distance train station and the local train station in Mumbai Central. The next four stations we’ll bring online will be Allahabad, Patna, Jaipur and Ranchi and others will follow very shortly. said, Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.