Bangalore, April 17 , 2016: The telecom arm of  Indian Railways --  Railtel  --  has joined with Google  to  launch WiFi services at 9 stations, starting with Mumbai Central. This wil be followed by Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda (Hyderabad), Ernakulum Jn (Kochi) and Vishakhapatnam.
The service built over the fiber network of Raitel is designed to offer high speed broadband experience to users. Travellers passing through these stations will now be able to easily stream a high definition video while they’re waiting, research their destination, download a book or a new game for their journey. Google is committed to work with Indian Railways and Railtel to deliver high-speed Wi-Fi network that will be available to 10 million Indians a day by the end of the year, covering 100 of the busiest train stations in India. The project will be eventually rolled out to cover 400 train stations across India.  
 Says  R. K. Bahuguna, Chairman and Managing Director of Railtel: “We are very proud that Indian Railways has taken the lead to offer the best Wi-Fi network experience available to passengers today in the country. And while the service will be free for a reasonable amount of time, our long-term goal is to make this project self-sustainable to allow for expansion to more stations and places, with RailTel and other partners, in the future.”
 Adds Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Project, Google India: “The network is now live in ten key stations across the country and we are scaling up our efforts to roll out the network quickly to cover some of smaller stations where connectivity is much more limited. As internet adoption grows in India, easy and affordable access to high-speed networks is the real need of the hour. With 100 stations live, this project will be the largest publicly accessible high speed Wi-Fi network in the country, but our real hope is that this project will set new benchmarks in delivering a reliable and consistent network connectivity in the country.”