Jharkhand’s Mahuamilan station becomes country’s 5500th station to get free wifi facility

Jharkhand’s Mahuamilan station which comes under East Central Railway (ECZ) zone has become 5500th station to get free wifi facility. The RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. (RCIL), the digital arm of Indian Railways, has thus provided free WiFi at 5,500 stations across country. RailTel is a ‘Miniratna’ enterprise that focuses on providing broadband and VPN services.

WiFi across India

Indian Railways began the service of providing free WiFi at its railway stations from January 2016. The mission was to provide WiFi at all railway stations (except the halt ones). For this purpose of providing WiFi, RailTel roped in partners including Tata Trust, Google, PGCIL (Power Grid Corporation of India Limited) for some parts of the project. It also got funding from Department of Telecom USOF (Universal Service Obligation Fund) for 200 stations.

The first station covered was Mumbai Central station, Maharashtra and in a span of 46 months RailTel has extended service to 5,500 stations across country. WiFi is being provided under brand name ‘Railwire’– the retail broadband service of RailTel. In October 2019 a total of 1.5 crore user logins in RailWire Wi-Fi services across all stations recorded a consumption of 10242TB data.

Month: Current Affairs - December, 2019