How Indian Railways Turned On Free Wi-Fi On 400 Railway Stations And Empowered 80 Lakh People

More than two years ago, in January 2016, Google partnered up with RailTel, a project of the Indian Railway Ministry. Their ambitious idea was to bring free high-speed Wi-Fi to Indian railway stations. Not just a handful of them either, but to 400 all over the country. Now, in June 2018, they've finally succeeded.

The initiative was launched under the government's Digital India program, as a way to bring millions of unconnected Indians online for the first time, as part of what Railtel calls a "digital inclusion platform." They finally hit that 400th station milestone in Dibrugarh, a city of sprawling tea estates in northern Assam. There, Google and Railtel representatives laid out their plan for what¡¯s next for Digital India.

RailTel's K Manohar Raja (2nd from L), Google's K Suri (1st from R) at the 400th RailWire launch in Dibrugarh

ALSO READ: Google Rolls Out Free, High-Speed Railtel Wi-Fi In 100th Railway Station At Ooty

K Suri, lead for the Next Billion Users team of Google India, says, ¡°Bringing high speed connectivity to millions of Indians across train station, has been an incredible journey and underscores the importance of investing in public Wi-Fi as a crucial step in getting high quality internet to everyone in India. With over 8 million monthly unique users connecting to the network, this is a lighthouse project for India and every growing economy that is looking to bring the benefit of connectivity to everyone in their country.¡±

The birth of an idea

K Manohar Raja, the Executive Director for Enterprise Business at RailTel, says his team was focused on a way to bring every Indian up to par, on common digital platform with equal access. ¡°We had the infrastructure but not the access network,¡± he says. Then, he thought, if we can¡¯t bring Internet to the people, why not bring people to the Internet?

Thus Railwire was born. With Railtel laying out the network infrastructure in the form of fiber optic cables across the country, it was up to Google to build the platform people would use to access it, and find a way to make it simple enough to retain users with scant digital exposure. Suri says there¡¯s nothing particularly noteworthy about the routers they use either, they¡¯re simply off-the shelf gigabit routers boosted by his team. However, while they might provide a strong signal, as we witnessed for ourselves, it¡¯s the implementation that makes the network itself so strong.

How the Indian Railways and Google work together behind-the-scenes

Each platform at a station features about three to four of these routers, bolted either to pillars or the ceiling, and enclosed in lockboxes to prevent tampering. Routers on adjacent platforms are placed in the alternating spaces; if you could draw a line between each adjacent router it would form a structure like a fishing net. That way, wherever you stand in a railway station, you¡¯re always covered by at least three of these routers to give the most optimum connectivity.

At more populous stations like Mumbai or Guwahati, where a lot of people are connected simultaneously, you might get download speeds of about 1.2 to 1.5 Mbps. But in more remote areas like Dibrugarh, we captured download speeds of up to 29 to 34 Mbps.

When you connect to the Wi-Fi network for the first time in the day, all of that speed is at your disposal for absolutely free. After an hour, it¡¯s been designed to throttle your connection to avoid misuse, but it¡¯s still a respectable speed. And all you need to connect is to provide your phone number and verify it with a 4-digit OTP sent to you. Do that at just one station and you can automatically connect at any other.

ALSO READ: Google India's RailTel Free Wi-Fi Is Better Here Than In London, San Francisco Railway Stations

And because of how easy to use and accessible this network is, RailWire has seen an immense amount of popularity. Since Mumbai Central became the first station with free Wi-Fi on January 22, 2016, RailWire has garnered close to 8 million monthly active users. Two-thirds of this user base are in the 19-34 age group, and each consuming an average of about 350 MB per day. According to Google¡¯s figures, at least 400 million people access RailTel¡¯s free Wi-Fi more than once a day, and 36 percent of the total are are using Wi-Fi for the first time.

Quite obviously, most of these users are either watching videos online, whether it be YouTube or Hotstar, or are browsing social networks. However, there are plenty of other buying travel tickets, conducting online banking transactions, just Googling information, and even shopping online.

The road after the finish line

With its 400th station online, the partnership between Google and RailTel has officially ended, but that doesn¡¯t mean RailWire will now languish into disrepair like so many other government projects. As both Suri and Raja are quick to point out, the end of the partnership only means this current project won¡¯t expand any further in the near future, but existing stations will certainly be taken care of. The two stress that a budget and plans were already set aside during the project¡¯s launch, that will take care of Railwire¡¯s functioning for the next five years.

What RailTel does have to worry about though, in the long term, is how to make RailWire sustainable. Specifically, how the project can generate money to keep itself running. The obvious solution would be to eventually begin charging users a fee for the Wi-Fi, or to star displaying ads. But neither of those ideas is something RailTel is married to. Raja believes that, if RailWire were to start charging people to use it, the project would cease to be an equal access platform. Ads as well could drive away users. ¡°We¡¯re looking into generating revenue in a way that doesn¡¯t create friction for users,¡± Raja says. ¡° We want to sort that out before pushing that lever.¡±

Why stop at just railway stations?

Yet, despite this project coming to a close, it¡¯s not the end of the road for the grander plan. ¡°We want this to be the model of quality Wi-Fi to bring to the public,¡± Suri affirms excitedly. And that¡¯s exactly what Google plans to do going forward; bring this kind of free, accessible Wi-Fi to cities across India. In fact, even RailTel has similar plans, claims Raja, that of bringing public Wi-Fi to major towns in India, working from higher to lower tiers.

Unfortunately, both sides seem to currently be working on concepts and pilot projects of their own towards this end. Neither side has yet agreed to a partnership here as well, and don¡¯t even know if there ever will be one. Fingers crossed; after all why mess with a unit that works?

Very cool to hear the story of Shrinath, a porter at a train station in Cochin, India who passed the civil service exam with hard work and studying using wifi at the station. Proud of our partnership with @railminndia @PMOIndia to bring wifi to 400 stations across India https://t.co/FRSa8b5QiL

¡ª Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) June 7, 2018

Still, Indians can probably hold onto hope that they¡¯re going to see a few positive changes in their cities in the coming years. And if we¡¯re very lucky, access to free public Wi-Fi will become a common thing in the coming decade, something that will go a long way in connecting the deeper pockets of the nation and bring millions of people online.