More than 18 months after the free WiFi service was launched at Chennai Central, Southern Railway is now planning not just to upgrade it, but also extend it to a few other stations around Chennai too.
Google will provide and design content, sources in Southern Railway said.
Railtel, which is currently providing the free service at Central, will continue to be the telecom service provider.
“Railtel, Southern Railway and Google will come together to provide free high speed internet connectivity for passengers waiting to board trains.
Free WiFi can be accessed at concourses, waiting rooms and platforms and other areas,” officials told The Hindu on Monday evening.
Elaborating, officials said that the existing infrastructure would be thoroughly revamped and the network scaled up to withstand the spike in data they expect once the new system is put in place.
They said that an important focus of the revamp would be to ensure that there are no ‘dead spots’ – areas within the station that are out of the coverage area of the free WiFi.
According to officials, 37,024 people used the free WiFi at Central in March and over 2,000 GB (gigabyte) of data transfer took place. They said the number of people accessing the free service was increasing — it was nearly 30,000 in February this year. The upgraded network with Google providing content and design is likely to be completed at Central by July, they said.
Central station is first in country to get free Wi-Fi
Browsing is free for the first half-an-hour, and after that, a nominal amount will be charged
Bored waiting for your train at Chennai Central railway station? Step into the virtual world and send office mails or skim through Facebook, using the free Wi-Fi offered at the station.
Chennai Central became the first railway station to get Wi-Fi connectivity after railway minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda inaugurated the facility on Friday. However, many commuters said they were not able to access the Internet from the platforms.
The minister had announced in the Budget that Wi-Fi facility would be provided at all A1 stations. A pilot project has been started at Chennai Central by RailTel, a public sector telecom infrastructure provider.
“To access Wi-Fi, the passenger has to choose the ‘railwire’ network. The username is the person’s mobile number and the password will be messaged to respective users upon registering,” said a railway official.
Browsing is free for the first half-an-hour, and after that, a nominal amount will be charged. “We will introduce Wi-Fi at Egmore railway station next,” said the official.
The iconic Chennai Central railway station is likely to become the first station in Tamil Nadu to get Google’s wi-fi network coverage.
“Plans are afoot to bring the Central railway station under Google’s wifi network by March next year, making it the first station in Tamil Nadu to get the facility,” said sources in RailTel Corporation of India, with which Google has teamed up to provide wi-fi connectivity in 100 railway stations across the country.
From March 2016 onwards, the Central station, where a wi-fi facility has been under trial since September 2014, will offer a faster, one gigabytes per second Internet connectivity to commuters.
While RailTel will provide the broadband service, Google will offer access points, the sources said.
At any given point, over 6,000 people are using the station’s existing wi-fi facility. “As per our figures, during the period of one month between November 15 and December 15, about 6,500 were using the wi-fi facility at any given time,” an official said, adding that Google’s entry would be a shot in the arm for the station.
The six other stations selected for the project -- Egmore, Tambaram, Arakkonam, Coimbatore, Madurai and Tiruchirappalli -- will get the facility by 2016-end, said sources with RailTel, a mini-ratna enterprise functioning under the Railways.
During his visit to India last week, Chennai-born Pichai announced that 100 railway stations would have wif-fi connections by December 2016.
Google’s wi-fi facility will go live first at the Mumbai Central station, in January.
Source : http://www.thehindu.com/
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