Google over the weekend confirmed speculation that its launching a public Wi-Fi project, in cooperation with Indian Railways and RailTel, to bring public Wi-Fi to 400 train stations across India.
The company announced the project via a corporate blog post by CEO Sundar Pichai. the announcement coincided with Prime Minister Narenda Modi visiting Google’s California offices.
The first 100 stations will be covered by Google Wi-Fi by the end of 2016 with the remaining stations “following in quick succession,” Pichai wrote.
“Even with just the first 100 stations online, this project will make Wi-Fi available for the more than 10 million people who pass through every day,” Pichai noted. “This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users. It will also be fast — many times faster than what most people in India have access to today, allowing travelers to stream a high definition video while they’re waiting, research their destination, or download some videos, a book or a new game for the journey ahead. Best of all, the service will be free to start, with the long-term goal of making it self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and other places, with RailTel and more partners, in the future.”
As for the partnership aspect, Indian Railways operates the rail system, the largest in the world, while RailTel provides Internet services via a fiber network that largely follows existing rail lines.
“We think this is an important part of making the Internet both accessible and useful for the more than 300 million Indians already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not,” Pichai said, recalling his time growing up in India. “Just like I did years ago, thousands of young Indians walk through Chennai Central every day, eager to learn, to explore and to seek opportunity. It’s my hope that this Wi-Fi project will make all these things a little easier.”
