Railway Budget 2015: Wi-fi plan, SMS big opportunities for telecom industry

NEW DELHI: Indian Railways’ plans to introduce wi-fi facility in 400 category B stations across the country, and SMS alerts as part of the 2015-16 Railway Budget announced on Thursday could provide huge business opportunities to private players, industry and analysts said.

Ozone Networks, the largest public wi-fi provider in India, said that the size of such an opportunity was immense. “We have already started discussions with the ministry for installing wi-fi in the stations,” Sanjeev Sarin, founder of Ozone Networks, told ET. Ozone has over 1500 hot spots across India including the Mumbai airport and McDonald’s outlets.

Sarin did not share details of investment or a blueprint of the way forward but added that the ministry has also asked the company to install wi-fi in two trains, without disclosing details.

Companies in the telecom sector including Tata Tele, Vodafone India and MTS that have become active in the wi-fi hot spot space over the last few quarters would be equally interested in implementing the government's plan, industry watchers said.

“The rail budget will leverage the reach of mobile and telecom networks for better rail facilities for the citizens,” said Hemant Joshi, Partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells.

A number of public wi-fi hot spots exist in India but, at present, people have access to wi-fi at two railway stations – Bangalore and New Delhi. The previous government began the program to introduce wi-fi in trains on a pilot basis in the Howrah Rajdhani Express. This was proposed to be extended to select Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto trains while the number of Category A and A1 railway stations which would have wi-fi was to be increased to 400, from the earlier plan of 75 such stations.

Railway minister in the present government, Suresh Prabhu, did not share any further details on rolling out this service to each of the 400 category B railway stations, during his budget speech. Mentions for trains getting the wi-fi facility was also missing. However, analysts were encouraged with the current set of announcements which they said were positive developments for the telecom sector. “The emphasis of railway budget on safety, usage of telecom and satellite technology through ISRO for unmanned crossings, SMS alerts, development of high speed rail network, improved customer experience through free Wi-Fi, mobile app to address complaints, multi-lingual e-portal are very good for the telecom and technology sectors,” Joshi said.