West Bengal's Midnapore railway station becomes 5000th station with free Wi-Fi

Midnapore railway station in West Bengal has become the 5000th station in the country to have free public Wi-Fi, officials said on Saturday. RailTel, a PSU under the railways, started providing free Wi-Fi from Mumbai Central station in January 2016.

In a span of 44 months, RailTel has successfully provided Wi-Fi at 5000 stations across the country, the railways said. Talking about the journey so far, Puneet Chawla, CMD/RailTel, said, "We are now just a few hundred stations away from achieving the ambitious target of providing free public Wi-Fi at all Indian railway stations (except the halt ones).

"The dedication of the RailTel team, our partners and support from the Indian railways has made it possible. The free Wi-Fi is becoming more and more popular with users. "The month of August 2019 saw total of 1.14 crores of user logins in 'RailWire' Wi-Fi services with 10192.55 TB of data usage across all stations," the railways said.

Out of a total of about 5000 stations commissioned so far, 70 percent are in rural areas. During the month of August, a total of 11.25 lakh users availed the Rural Wi-Fi services at 3406 rural railway stations with 2305 TB of data download.

Free Wi-Fi service to passengers is being provided under 'RailWire'- the retail broadband initiative of RailTel catering to enterprises, SMEs and homes.