india

Updated: Aug 11, 2019 07:36 IST

An estimated average of 23.5 million log-ins by users every month are consuming 8,000 terabytes of data through the free wireless network provided at the top 10 railway stations by Wi-Fi usage, according to RailTel Corporation of India. To put that in perspective, the data consumed is equivalent to downloading eight million feature-length movies.

In descending order, the top 10 railway stations by Wi-Fi usage are Howrah, New Delhi, Sealdah, Secunderabad, Patna, Kalyan, Old Delhi, Chennai, Lucknow and Gorakhpur, according to RailTel data accessed by Hindustan Times.

And it’s not just passengers of Indian Railways that are tapping the free airwaves. Citizens other than passengers of the national transporter are using the free Internet the most, according to anecdotal evidence.

“It is estimated that 20,000 users everyday are first-time users of the internet and there are very heartwarming stories of how the station Wi-Fi has helped to transform lives,” said a spokesperson for RailTel, which oversees the provision of W-Fi at railway stations.

RailTel came across a railway porter who cleared the Kerala Public Service Commission examination by accessing the free WiF to prep for the exam; a female auto-rickshaw driver who visits her neighbourhood railway station to access information on the Internet so she can help her son do his homework , and a cafeteria manager at Bareilly station who uses the network to keep track of trains so he knows when to expect a rush of customers.

The RailTel spokesperson said the public sector unit doesn’t track which sites the users go to. It does know that the average time they surf is 30 minutes. One thing that sets apart Indian Railways is that Wi-Fi is it provides at its stations, unlike at domestic and global airports, is virtually limitless. Each log-in gives 24 hours of access to the Internet and once it lapses, a user can just log in again.

As expected, stations in Tier 1 cities like Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai register a greater number of user log-ins and data consumption than their tier 2 counterparts. The number 1 Wi-Fi user since the service started in January 2016, Howrah alone saw 490,000 log-ins in May.

Telecom prices and data rates have fallen steeply in India, but people obviously prefer free over cheap. “We found that public Wi-Fi is still a preferred choice of users while at railway stations,” said the RailTel spokesperson.

Ajmer’s Rana Pratap Nagar Railway station recently became the 2,000th station in the country to have public Wi-Fi . RailTel wants to cover 4,000 more stations by the end of October.

“Internet in India is largely mobile internet with a high percentage of them on 2G and 3G while RailTel had sought to bridge the digital divide by providing free and fast Wi-Fi, which also bridges the experience divide of the internet where millions of users experience fast access to internet for the first time. Moreover, as per the World Bank, a 10% increase in internet penetration leads to a 1.4% increase in GDP. This also augurs well for our economy,” said Puneet Chawla, chairman and managing director of RailTel.

And there are the Internet backwoods as well. At railway stations like Bahadurgarh (Haryana), Kokrajhar (West Bengal), Sadat (Uttar Pradesh), Jalpaiguri Road (WB), Lar Road (UP), Sandal kalan (Haryana) , Bhatni Jn (UP), Aurnihar (UP), Tantguturu (Andhra Pradesh) and Sihora (Madhya Pradesh), Wi-Fi facility is hardly used.

That isn’t stopping the national transporter from going ahead with plans to expand coverage.

“Wi-Fi is essential these days, and despite the heavy investment, you will have to do it to ensure everyone has access to fast internet. This also helps in informing the passenger about the status of the train,” said Shri Prakash, former member of Railway board.