Maligaon, June 28: About fifty eight railway stations of N.F. Railway have been provided with free Wi-Fi services for passenger till now. These includes A1 category stations like Guwahati, New Jalpaiguri; A category stations like Katihar, New Alipuduar, Siliguri, New Coochbehar, Lumding, Silchar, Kishanganj, Rangiya, etc; B category stations like Kokrajhar, Agartala, Mariani, New Tinsukia, Dibrugarh etc; apart from various other stations like Chaparmukh, Lanka, Falakata, Jirania, Darjeeling, Ghum, Udaipur, Naharlagun etc.
“RailWire Wi-Fi” by RailTel at Indian Railways stations is gaining popularity with each passing day. Free Wi-Fi services to passengers are being provided under ‘RailWire’ brand- the retail Broadband initiative of RailTel. In the month of May 2019 alone, the total user logins were 2.35 crore in1600 stations across India. The total unique users for the Wi-Fi were 1.19 crore consuming 8781.30 TB data. The numbers speak about the fact that despite of having easy access to mobile internet, public Wi-Fi is still a preferred choice of the Rail users while at railway stations.
Inspired by this vision of Digital India, Indian Railways and RailTel created a plan to transform Indian Railways stations into digital inclusion platform by providing fast free public Wi-Fi at stations. The journey of RailWire station Wi-fi started from Mumbai Central in January 2016 and within 2 years 4 months the RailWire Wi-Fi was live at 1600 stations across India. Internet in India is largely mobile internet with a high percentage of them on 2G and 3G.
While RailTel had sought to bridge the Digital Divide by providing free and fast Wi-Fi, which also bridges the experience divide of the internet where millions of users experience fast access to internet for the first time. This also augurs well for our economy. It is estimated that 20000 user’s everyday are first time users of the internet and there are very heart-warming stories of how the station Wi-Fi has helped to transform lives.
Moreover, as per the World Bank a 10% increase in internet penetration leads to a 1.4% increase in GDP.So far RailTel has already provided high speed free Wi-Fi at 1606 stations, now it has been planned to provide Wi-Fi to another 4791 stations within this year which will enable every stations of Indian Railways (except the halt stations) to have a Wi-Fi hotspot.
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