Suresh Prabhu to inaugurate free Wi-Fi at Bhubaneswar station tomorrow

Bhubaneswar: Union Railway minister Suresh Prabhu will inaugurate Google’s free Wi-Fi service at Bhubaneswar station tomorrow. The Wi-Fi service will be available for the commuters from April 17 onwards. Bhubaneswar is the second station in India after Mumbai Central to be covered under the project aimed at providing high speed internet network facility to rail users.

Designed to offer rail users the best internet experience, Wi-Fi will be available to any user who has a smartphone. Trial of the Wi-FI system has been going on for some time in Bhubaneswar, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Rail users would be able to stream high definition videos while waiting for their respective trains at the railway station with Wi-Fi becoming operational.

Under the Digital India initiative, Railways is committed to providing better internet facilities to passengers at 100 busiest stations by the end of this year.

Besides Bhubaneswar, trials are going on at about 10 more stations including Jaipur, Patna, Ranchi, Ernakulum, Allahabad, Lucknow and Guwahati to have the Wi-Fi service shortly.

Railtel, a PSU of the Railways, in collaboration with Google, is providing free Wi-Fi service at stations. Eventually, the service will be rolled out at 400 stations across the country covering all major rail premises. Railtel owns a Pan-India optic fiber network exclusively on railway track. It has laid out over 45,000 kms of optic fibre networks across the country, which Google will utilise for its Wi-Fi service.

The network is built for wide coverage and high capacity usage unlike a typical Wi-Fi hotspot which offers connectivity in limited area.

As per the plan, Railtel will be the ISP, while Google will provide the Wireless Area Networks (WAN) and will set-up the points of access at platforms.

(With PTI inputs)