Free wi-fi to reaches railway stations at Vijayawada and police stations at Mumbai

Expanding the high speed Internet network facility, Railways will launch the Google’s free Wi-Fi service at Vijayawada, Kachiguda and Raipur stations on may 5th . Last month, Wi-Fi service was launched at Bhubaneswar station. Designed to offer passengers the best internet experience, Wi-Fi will be available to any user who has a smartphone.

Trial of the Wi-FI is going on for some time at these stations and it will be launched on May 5 through video conferencing here, a senior Railway Ministry official said.

Before Bhubaneswar, Google’s free Wi-Fi service was launched in the Mumbai Central. Passengers would be able to stream high definition videos while waiting for their respective trains at the railway station with Wi-Fi becoming operational.

Under the Digital India initiative, Railways is committed to provide better internet facilities to the passengers at 100 busiest stations by the end of this year. Railtel, a PSU of the Railways, in collaboration with Google is providing free Wi-Fi service at stations. Eventually, the service will be rolled out at 400 stations across the country covering all major rail premises.

Railtel owns a Pan-India optic fiber network exclusively on railway track. It has laid out over 45,000 kms of optic fibre networks across the country, which Google will utilise for its Wi-Fi. The network is built for wide coverage and high capacity usage unlike a typical Wi-Fi hotspot which offers connectivity in limited area. As per the plan, Railtel will be the ISP, while Google will provide the Wireless Area Networks (WAN) and will set-up the points of access at platforms.

Also read : Free public wi-fi service launched at 10 railway stations across India

Joining in the brigade, Maharashtra Police has taken up an initiative to equip major police stations of Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai with free Wi-Fi facility, to be installed by private firm, Joister. The process has begun this year in March in Thane where the district Commissionerate and 33 police stations have been installed with the facility, a top executive of Joister said. Additional Director General of Police (admin), V V Laxminarayan, told PTI,

Joister has been offering its free Wi-Fi service as its CSR initiative to our workforce. We readily agreed to accept their proposal as it will enable our workforce to be more proactive and competitive. We want all our police stations be equipped with free Wi-Fi facility and this would definitely help our officers. Very soon all police stations of Mumbai and Navi Mumbai would be installed with the service, he said.

The official further said they plan to expand the facility across the state as and when the company approaches the department with further proposals. CMD, Joister, Nikunj Kampani said,

This is a welcoming step that our proposal to offer free Wi-Fi at police stations has been accepted. In next few weeks, we will install the facility ar all police training camps in the state, he said.

Apart from police stations, Joister has so far installed the service at Mumbai, Thane RTO headquarters, police training centre at Marol (Mumbai), 21 government offices, 15 colleges, eight slums, four hospitals and three bus terminals in the state.