RailWire Wi-Fi by RailTel at Indian Railways stations is gaining popularity with each passing day. In the month of May 2019, the total user logins were 2.35 crore in1600 stations across India. The total unique users for the Wi-Fi were 1.19 crore consuming 8781.30 TB data. It was also noticed that stations in Tier 1 cities like Kolkata, Delhi Mumbai register a greater number of user logins and data consumption than their tier 2 counterparts. Howrah station alone saw 4.9 lakh user logins in one month. The numbers speak volume about the fact that despite of having easy access to mobile internet, public Wi-Fi is still a preferred choice of the Rail users while at railway stations.
Usage statistics show significant pent up demand for connectivity, amongst train commuters in stations covered by the station Wi-Fi project who have used the service. With unconstrained, free high-speed Wi-Fi connectivity, an average user consumes 343 MB in an average 30-minute data session. This is much higher than what we observe on an average 3G connection in the country currently, around 30MB per user per day.
Inspired by this vision of Digital India, Indian Railways and RailTel created a plan to transform Indian Railways stations into digital inclusion platform by providing fast free public Wi-Fi at stations. The journey of RailWire station Wi-fi started from Mumbai Central in January 2016 and within 2 years 4 months the RailWire Wi-Fi was live at 1600 stations across India. The stations came in all sizes,it took more than 100+ access points to cover the 23 platforms of Howrah station while several smaller stations in rural India could be served with a single access point.
