Railway passengers across 4,000 stations in India will now get access to high-speed prepaid Wi-Fi service. While Wi-Fi access at railway stations is currently free, the new prepaid additions will offer increased speed while charging a nominal fee.
The Wi-Fi service across India’s railway stations is powered by RailTel and is available in some form across 5,950 stations across the country, although high-speed connectivity will be limited to just 4,000 stations.
Anybody with a smartphone around the station premises can access the Wi-Fi offered by RailTel with an OTP (one-time-password) verification based on an SMS sent to your phone number. The plans can then be paid for using options like net banking, wallet, credit card, etc.
Also read - CSMT Becomes First Green Railway Station In Mumbai
“We have launched prepaid plans for its Railwire WiFi at 4000 railway stations across India. A passenger can use 30 minutes free Wi-Fi per day at 1 Mbps speed at these 4000+ railway stations. For using the WiFi facility at a higher speed of up to 34mbps, the user needs to choose a plan with higher speed by paying a nominal fee,” a spokesperson for RailTel said.
Prior to coronavirus, around 2.9 crore people used RailTel’s Wi-Fi per month. Officials are expecting a revenue of around ₹10 to 15 crores per year from the prepaid plans on offer. However, this can only materialize when commuters/passengers at the station reach the pre-pandemic levels.
Read - CR To Carry Out Surveillance At Mumbai Railway Stations With Their 'Eye In The Sky'
Chairman and Managing Director at RailTel, Puneet Chawla said, “We did a detailed trial run of Prepaid WiFi at 20 stations in Uttar Pradesh and based on the response and detailed testing, we have launched this plan at 4000+ more stations across India. We intend to launch the prepaid plans for all the stations with our RailWire WiFi this financial year.”
The prices for the prepaid high-speed Wi-Fi plans at railway stations are as follows:
Also read - 19 Mumbai Railway Stations Set For Makeover
Share
Tweet
