Two million people are using free Wi-Fi at Indian railway stations, says CEO Sundar Pichai
Google has teamed up with RailTel, the telecom arm of the Indian Railways, to provide free Wi-Fi.
During Alphabet’s 2016 second quarter earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai stated that nearly two million Indians are using high Wi-Fi services at 23 railway stations across the country that the company provided as part of its project.
These include Mumbai Central, Pune, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda, Ernakulum Junction, Vishakhapatnam, Jaipur, Patna, Guwahati, Ujjain, Allahabad and Chennai Central. The company aims to provide high-speed public Wi-Fi services at 100 railway stations across India under this project.
According to a report, Gulzar Azad, Head of Access Programs, Google India explains, “Railway stations are the one place in India where you can get reliable power, fiber thanks to RailTel and most importantly almost all of the demographic of India passes through these stations. Imagine the amount of population that will pass through the top 100 stations of the country in a year or two. Being a point of transit, it is not the same 10 million people every day.”
Google said that while they are only at approximately 20 percent of the roll-out schedule for this year, the response has been phenomenal.