Nine new India train stations (Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Ernakulam Jn, Kacheguda, Pune, Raipur, Ranchi, Vijayawada and Vishakhapatnam) now have free Wi-Fi service, paid for by Google.
In total, some 10 stations now are activated, with plans to support 90 stations in 2016 and a total of more than 400 eventually.
“While there will always be some level of free Wi-Fi available, the long-term goal will be making this self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, in the future,” said Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Programs in India.
As would any Internet service provider, Google will take some steps to assure that no single uer “hogs” bandwidth. “Also, to make sure that a few people spending all day in the station downloading lots of big files don’t slow down the network for everyone, users might notice a drop in speed after their first hour on the network, said Azad. “Most people should still be able to do the things they’ll want to do online.”
In some part, the deployment aims to acquaint more users with the value of higher-speed connections, thus spurring demand for higher speed access, as well as the supply.
According to some sources, only around two to four million households, in a country of 1.3 billion people, have a connection fast enough to stream an HD movie, said Azad.
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