lndian Railways, the national transporter, is implementing a number of new initiatives nowadays, to ensure an easy and comfortable journey for its commuters and here comes the biggest one – availing free high-speed WiFi on 4,000 railway stations across the country. After joining hands with Google, regarding this, the Railway Ministry has now involved the Tata Group, an Indian multinational conglomerate holding company, in the project.
At first, to test how exactly does the project work, Tata Trusts had been allotted eight railway stations between Bengaluru and Mysore, to run the thing in a trial basis and interestingly, all of them have come up with positive results, as per reports.
After discussing the project with Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year, The Railway Ministry, has strategically implemented the free WiFi facility at railway stations where none of the bodies – either the Indian Railways or the government has to expend on the plan and now the project is being taken over by Tata Trusts as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). For the Railway Board, this initiative is of the prime importance as this will be the largest CSR initiative on Indian Railways ever.
As per reports, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal took personal initiative in discussions with Tata Group’s top management to get the company involved in the project. Further, the Tatas have also tied up with a separate agency to carry out the project of enjoying high-speed internet for free. Thus, the national transporter will not have to spend anything for this.
The work in this direction is in full progress as around 712 railway stations have already been equipped with the facility. Railways is planning to take this number to 2,000 as soon as possible. The internet giant, Google has wired up more than 400 bigger railway stations across the country while the PowerGrid Corporation is providing the service to 100 railway stations as part of its CSR initiative. The Indian Railways’s own telecom PSU RailTel has also implemented the free Wifi facility to a number of railway stations as well.
Out of the 8,000-odd railway stations, nearly 2,000 have been excluded from the proposed WiFi project, being considered as halt stations, which do not receive significant footfall.
