OREANDA-NEWS. Continuing with its exercise of providing High speed WiFi services at Railway Stations, Minister of Railways, Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu inaugurated Wi Fi services at 8 Mumbai Suburban Railway Stations in Maharashtra viz., Churchgate, Bandra, Bandra Terminus, Dadar Western Railway, Dadar Central Railway, Khar Road, Kalyan and Lokmanya Tilak, today i.e. 22 nd August 2016. The Wi-Fi facility for the visitors & rail users of these 8 busy stations of Mumbai Suburban Rail Network has been commissioned by a Railway PSU, RailTel in association with Google for providing high speed State-of-the-art world class INTERNET experience to the commuters.

The Wi-Fi facility is being provided at a speed of 1 GBps. A total number of 318 access points, 120 access switches & 30 fibre switches has been installed at these 8 stations to provide seamless fast Wi-Fi to the huge number of commuters visiting these stations.

In addition to 8 stations being launched today, RailWire Wi-Fi has been soft launched at 8 more stations (Sealdah, Allahabad, Pune, Puri, Tambaram, Chennai Egmore, Hazrat Nizamuddin and Chandigarh) and will be formally launched soon in different parts of the country.

During the launch event Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, Minister of Railways said, Railway stations are the places where the cross section of the society is available. This initiative is part of bridging the digital divide & providing high speed access network to all rail users. Once implemented this shall be one of the largest public Wi-Fi project in the World.

On the occasion of launch, CMD of RailTel said, “Our intent was to fulfil Indian Railway’s vision of providing Railway passengers access to high speed Internet through our Optical fiber communication network.”

18 stations of Mumbai Suburban were chosen for Wi Fi services in the initial phase, out of which Mumbai Central was inaugurated with fast RailWire Wi-Fi on 22 nd of January 2016. The Wi-Fi at 8 Mumbai Suburban stations are being launched today and in the remaining 9 stations (Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Borivali, Belapur, Byculla, Kurla, Vashi, Panvel, Andheri and Thane) the work is in progress and will be formally launched soon.

Pune is the other city in Maharashtra where the WiFi services have been launched and by the end of this year the service will be provided in Nagpur and Solapur also.

The service built over the fiber network of RailTel is designed to offer high-speed broadband like experience to users. Travelers passing through these stations will now be able to easily stream a high definition video while they are waiting, research their destination, download a books, movies, songs or a new game for their journey.

RailTel Corporation of India Ltd., a Mini-Ratna PSU under Ministry of Railways, has taken a lead in providing fast Wi-Fi for the use of passengers at A1 & A category Railway stations. RailTel along with Google as the technology partner is setting up fast Wi-Fi network initially covering 100 A1 & A category stations which shall enable services to around 10 million Indians, by the end of this year. Wi-Fi services to passengers are being provided under ‘Railwire’, the retail Broadband distribution model of RailTel. Designed to offer users the best Internet experience, Railwire Wi-Fi will be available to any user who has a working mobile connection on a smartphone.

Across India, under this partnership, Wi-Fi services have already been formally inaugurated at 21 stations namely Mumbai Central, Bhubaneswar, Patna, Ranchi, Raipur, Gorakhpur, Ernakulam Jn., Kacheguda, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Lucknow, Lucknow Jn., Ujjain, Bhopal, Tirupati, Tiruchchirappalli, Guwahati, Jhansi, Jaipur, Mughal Sarai Jn. and upgraded system at Chennai Central.