The railways has enabled free Wi-Fi at its 6100th station as the facility went live at at Ubarni Railway station (Rae Bareli district, Uttar Pradesh) over Lucknow Division of Northern Railway, the national transporter said. The railways provided Wi-Fi facility first at the Mumbai Railway station in 2016, reaching its 6000th station, at Hazaribagh town of Jharkhand .
"Out of these 6100 Railway stations, more than 5000 stations are in rural areas making Wi-Fi facility available at many far-flung stations across the country like several stations of North Eastern Region and all the 15 stations of Kashmir Valley," RailTel said in a statement. RailWire Wi-Fi at stations is helping to connect the unconnected as majority of stations of this public Wi-Fi network are located in rural India with poor connectivity.
Envisaged in 2015 Rail Budget, the project of providing free Wi-Fi Internet facility at stations is one of the largest and fastest public Wi-Fi networks of the world and aims to convert the Railway platform into a platform for digital inclusion.
Students, especially competitive examination aspirants from remote locations with limited access to internet, use the station Wi-Fi facilities for their examination preparations. Passengers are also using this facility for leveraging entertainments on their personal devices.
RailWire Wi-Fi at Railway stations is available to any user who has a smartphone with working mobile connection for KYC considerations. The facility is very user friendly. To switch on the connection, passengers need to scan Wi-Fi options and choose RailWire. Once the browser takes the user to the RailWire portal, it will ask for a mobile number to which a One Time Password (OTP) will be sent. Once connected, the Wi-Fi connection will last for 30 minutes. This helps the rail passengers to stay connected and updated with information.
The Wi-fi is ‘free’ for the first 30 min of usage every day at 1 mbps speed. For using the Wi-Fi facility further at ‘higher’ speed beyond 30 minutes, the user needs to choose a plan with higher speed by paying a nominal fee. The plans vary from Rs. 10/day (for 5 GB @ 34 MBPS) to Rs. 75/30 day (for 60 GB @ 34 MBPS) excluding GST. A number of payment options like net banking, wallet, credit card can be used to purchase plan online.
Provision of Wi-Fi facility at stations is being provided on a self-sustainable basis with no cost to the railways with the help of RailTel, a PSU under Ministry of Railways.
