Raipur, h April, 2016 — Indian Railway’s arm, Railtel, which provides Internet services as RailWire via its extensive network along with Google today announced the launch of free high-speed public Wi-Fi services at Raipur Railway Station which will benefit over 1.5 lakh visitors daily.

 

With this launch, Google has successfully rolled out  public Wi-Fi services across ten key Railways Stations now, enabling access to over 1.5 million Indians daily as part of the world’s largest public Wi-Fi project.

Starting with the first launch at Mumbai Central in January this year, the list of stations now offering public Wi-Fi services includes Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Ernakulum Jn (Kochi) and Vishakhapatnam. As the project picks up pace, the target is to cover 100 of the country’s busiest stations by end of 2016.The service will be formally inaugurated by Hon’ble Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu soon.

 

The service built over the fibre network of Raitel is designed to offer high speed broadband experience to users. Travelers passing through these stations will now be able to easily stream a high definition video, research their destination, download a book or a new game for their journey. Google is committed to working with the Indian Railways and Railtel to deliver high-speed Wi-Fi network that will be available to 10 million Indians a day by the end of the year, covering 100 of the busiest train stations in India. The project will eventually be rolled out across 400 train stations across the geo.

“With the addition of Raipur Railway Station, the network is now live in ten stations across the country and we are scaling up our efforts to roll out 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. 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 connectivity in the country”, said Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India.

Commenting on the launch, Chairman and Managing Director of Railtel Shri R. K. Bahuguna said, “As outlined by the Hon’ble minister Shri Suresh Prabhu, modernising and improving the amenities available to passengers of Indian Railways is a 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.”

About Google Inc.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in September 1998. Since then, the company has grown to more than 50,000 employees worldwide, with a wide range of popular products and platforms like Search, Maps, Ads, Gmail, Android, Chrome, and YouTube.

 

About RailTel

RailTel Corporation a "Mini Ratna (Category-I)" PSU is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fiber network on exclusive Right of Way (ROW) along Railway track. The OFC network covers all important towns & cities of the country and several rural areas covering 70% of India's population. RailTel with strong nationwide presence is committed to bring cutting edge technology and offer innovative services to the Indian Telecom market.