Indian Railways + Google Fibre | Free Hi-Speed WiFi in Railway Stations
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| Project Nilgiri |
Indian Railways and Google Fibre has joined to create India’s largest network of free WiFi across railway stations. This partnership has been named as ‘Project Nilgiri’. Google Fiber, the cutting edge technology to provide high speed Internet service. The masterstroke which Google has played to partner with RailTel, which provides infrastructure and platform.
The pilot project of ‘Project Nilgiri’ will be setting up Wi-Fi hotspots at approximately 400 stations across India over a span of 4 months from now.
RailTel, a public sector unit has already laid optical fiber cable across 32,500 kms and work is in progress for rest of 29,500 kms. As per Wikipedia, RailTel has “state of the art multimedia telecom network using SDH/DWDM-based transmission systems and high end routers for MPLS-IP network.” And the best part is that, Department of Telecommunications has already allocated 2.7 GHz band to RailTel for launching broadband and other Internet based services.
Google Fiber, famous among tech lovers who loves speed for browsing, streaming or downloading content on the internet. Google Fibre currently provides speeds up to 1 Gbps in USA. Google has already started this at its Hyderabad campus, which is the biggest outside USA.
Google is working closely with Railtel, where fiber network running along railway tracks in rural and urban regions covering 70% of India’s population.
Wi-Fi connectivity will be free to passengers after mobile number verification through (OTP) One-Time Password sent over SMS. First 30 minutes will be high speed after which speed will be reduced but connectivity will still continue. Now, Indian railways provides Wi-Fi connectivity in moving trains for selected routes like Rajdhani Express using satellite communication technology. Project Nilgiri in phase 2 expansion plans to provide Wi-Fi on board moving trains using its cutting edge technology.
Currently, the download speeds are somewhere in the 7 Mbps, while upload speeds are in 5 Mbps range. In near future (WLC) Wireless Lan Controller will be set up in Mumbai and Chennai after which latency will fall to 1-2 ms and speed will be increased. So everyone is looking forward to this welcome move.
Internet Service Providers in India like Airtel, Idea, Tata DoCoMo, Aircel and Reliance may find this news as disturbing. As Google and RailTel can make some serious inroads with such a huge infrastructure coverage and technology.
The pilot project of ‘Project Nilgiri’ will be setting up Wi-Fi hotspots at approximately 400 stations across India over a span of 4 months from now.
RailTel, a public sector unit has already laid optical fiber cable across 32,500 kms and work is in progress for rest of 29,500 kms. As per Wikipedia, RailTel has “state of the art multimedia telecom network using SDH/DWDM-based transmission systems and high end routers for MPLS-IP network.” And the best part is that, Department of Telecommunications has already allocated 2.7 GHz band to RailTel for launching broadband and other Internet based services.
Google Fiber, famous among tech lovers who loves speed for browsing, streaming or downloading content on the internet. Google Fibre currently provides speeds up to 1 Gbps in USA. Google has already started this at its Hyderabad campus, which is the biggest outside USA.
Google is working closely with Railtel, where fiber network running along railway tracks in rural and urban regions covering 70% of India’s population.
Wi-Fi connectivity will be free to passengers after mobile number verification through (OTP) One-Time Password sent over SMS. First 30 minutes will be high speed after which speed will be reduced but connectivity will still continue. Now, Indian railways provides Wi-Fi connectivity in moving trains for selected routes like Rajdhani Express using satellite communication technology. Project Nilgiri in phase 2 expansion plans to provide Wi-Fi on board moving trains using its cutting edge technology.
Currently, the download speeds are somewhere in the 7 Mbps, while upload speeds are in 5 Mbps range. In near future (WLC) Wireless Lan Controller will be set up in Mumbai and Chennai after which latency will fall to 1-2 ms and speed will be increased. So everyone is looking forward to this welcome move.
Internet Service Providers in India like Airtel, Idea, Tata DoCoMo, Aircel and Reliance may find this news as disturbing. As Google and RailTel can make some serious inroads with such a huge infrastructure coverage and technology.
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