HUBBALLI: The South Western Railway has recorded the landmark of installing high speed
Wi-Fi service at 115 stations in Karnataka under “Digital India” initiative of the Centre.
Railway Board has entrusted this work to Rail-Tel for provision of Wi-Fi at stations across India in collaboration with Google. Google has expressed interest in this project during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Google Headquarter at Mountain View, California, in 2016. High speed Wi-Fi services at Railway stations are now being provided with the collaboration of Rail-tel and Google. Rail-Tel is providing high speed end to end network connectivity on Optical Fiber Cable(OFC) and Google is providing radio access network equipment along with technology support, stated a release from SWR.
South Western Railway has meticulously followed “Mission Wi-fi” and now it has commissioned the same in as many as 115 stations within 18 months. All the main stations of SWR are connected with high speed Wi-Fi. The stations include Bengaluru, Yesvantpur, Mysuru and Hubballi. Majority of taluk headquarters that have railway stations have now been provided with WI-FI network.
Access points are installed to provide Wi-Fi services at stations. Each access point covers 25 to 40 metres. All platforms and entry area within station limits are covered by access point. Multiple access points are provided at major stations whereas single access point is provided at rural stations. The maximum bandwidth allotted to each station is 1 GB.
The procedure to use railway Wi-Fi is simple and only needs entry of four digit code sent to mobile on to mobile/laptop. Once logged in, unlimited service can be availed. Internet access with a speed of up to 1 Mbps (upload) and 3 Mbps (download) is provided free to the users for the first 30 minutes in a day subsequently speed reduces to 64 Kbps. However access to railway related site and for information like PNR and Train enquiry will be continue to be free for unlimited time, the release stated.
