04 March,2021 06:30 PM IST | Mumbai | Rajendra B. Aklekar
Passengers surf the internet on their phones at a free wi-fi zone inside a suburban railway station in Mumbai. Pic/AFP
All rail commuters, including those in Mumbai, can now buy Wi-Fi plans at railway stations after the initial 30-minute free period is over and surf the internet.
With a vision of turning railway stations into a platform for digital inclusion, RailTel Corporation of India Limited has started the Wi-Fi plans service. Railway Wi-Fi service is currently available at 5,950 plus stations across the country and accessible to anyone with a smartphone and an active connection (post verification through OTP sent via SMS).
RailTel has launched prepaid plans for its Railwire Wi-Fi at 4,000 plus railway stations across India. Going forward, a passenger can use 30 minute free Wi-Fi per day at 1 Mbps speed at these railway stations. For using the Wi-Fi facility at a higher speed of up to 34 Mbps, the user needs to choose a plan with a higher speed by paying a nominal fee.
The plans are as below:
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Paid Wi-Fi Plans excluding GST
The plans have been designed to offer flexible choices to users as per their needs. A number of payment options like net banking, wallet, credit card can be used to purchase the plans online.
In pre-COVID times, more than 2.9 crore people were using the service monthly. Once the situation normalizes and footfall at stations increase, a revenue of Rs 10-15 crore annually is expected from the service.
Talking about the planned launch, Puneet Chawla, CMD RailTel told mid-day, "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 4,000 plus more stations across India. We intend to launch the prepaid plans for all the stations with our RailWire Wi-Fi this financial year."
