Indian Railways is soon going to make train journey more exciting by providing “Content on Demand Service (CoD)” on trains and various railway stations. This non-fare streams will generate more revenue for the national carrier. RailTel is spearheading the project to provide the services to the passengers in trains in phases.
At first, four selected trains will get this service in the next 45 days and will be rolled out in all trains and stations phased-wise within the next two years. The streaming service will be accessible on 8,731 trains.The new content app plan sounds similar to the in-flight entertainment service .
Once the service gets activated, the passengers can enjoy hassle-free access to the free or subscription-based entertainment app and high speed streaming in their personal devices during the journey. The streaming app will showcase movies, shows and educational programs and will be available in paid and unpaid formats. Content Servers along with Wi-Fi access points will be installed in train coaches and the content will be available to the passenger at extremely high speed,so no buffering while the train is running. Periodic and automatic content refresh will be done on the go in the coach servers of all trains over the RailTel’s Station Wi-Fi network, 5573 Railway stations as on date.
As confirmed by Puneet Chawla, CMD of RailTel, the services are expected to roll out by 2022. It will enhance the overall passenger experience during travel.
Other than content, the app will have also the option of providing a range of services and will be done through partnerships with various services providers in the e-commerce, travel and bookings space. DESP, for the content services will share a fixed yearly minimum guaranteed amount with RailTel alongwith revenue share which will be divided between Indian Railways and RailTel.
