Google's free WiFi now available at 400 Indian Railways stations

After launching its first free WiFi service from Mumbai Central station in January 2016, Google has today announced the completion of the free service at 400 railway stations across India in collaboration with RailTel, the telecom arm of Indian Railways. Dibrugarh in Assam has become the 400th railway station to get the free WiFi service from Google, said the internet giant in a statement.

Indian Railways had signed an MoU with Google in December, 2015 to launch the service, which offers thirty minutes of free internet access. The average data consumption per user per session has been recorded around 350MB.

The project has succeeded in its mission of bringing connectivity to millions of unconnected Indians, leveraging on the nationwide optic fiber network backbone created by RailTel, it added.


Within the first year of the project's launch, 100 of the busiest railway stations across India were brought online, enabling 15,000 people to experience the internet for the first time every day, it said.

"With over 8 million monthly unique users connecting to the network, this is a lighthouse project for India and every growing economy that is looking to bring the benefit of connectivity to everyone in their country," Google India Director Partnership Next Billion Users K Suri said.

K Manohar Raja, Executive Director (Enterprise Business) at RailTel said the endeavour has been to bridge the experience divide by providing one of the fastest public WiFi networks in the world.

While majority of the users are in the 19-34 age group, efforts to help older and first time users with onground support staff has helped millions to experience the internet for the first time, the statement said.

(With PTI inputs)