Net facility: RailTel to invite EoIs

31 July 2003, Hindu Business Line

The company is seeking to exploit the surplus bandwidth available with the Railways for commercial gains for the organisation.

RAILTEL Corporation of India Ltd, the broadband subsidiary of the Railways, will soon invite expressions of interest from prospective franchisees to set up Internet facilities at different stations across the country.

As against inviting bids for individual stations, RailTel has decided to offer blocks of 15-20 stations along specified routes and it will ask the franchisees to roll out a minimum level of services at designated centres.

"We plan to work closely with our franchisees and will only insist on a minimum level of services that will include one or two PCs and an Internet telephone in some stations. Beyond that, we will leave them free to put up the infrastructure that they want," the RailTel Managing Director, Mr A.K. Chopra, told Business Line.

The first cyber café at a Railway facility is already operating at the New Delhi station. Apart from Net surfing, the unit offers Internet telephony, fax and photocopy facilities to the users.

"We feel that Internet telephony will be more successful in smaller centres where individuals will actually come to the station to make an international call. The franchisee will also be free to offer bandwidth to public telephone booth operators in the vicinity," Mr Chopra said.

Although the exact model of revenue sharing will be worked out in consultation with the franchisees, RailTel is seeking a fixed fees and a revenue share from the income from such facilities.

The company is seeking to exploit the surplus bandwidth available with the Railways for commercial gains for the organisation.

Apart from offering connectivity to organisations, it plans to take Internet to the heart of the country by setting up cyber cafes at smaller stations.

The company is set to offer connectivity to users through wireless local area network (LAN) technology that has already been tested successfully on a running train. Using the same wireless LAN technology, RailTel will also offer Internet at smaller towns across the country.

"RailTel was set up two years ago with the objective of turning the Railways investment in improving internal communication into a money-spinning activity. We are confident that the idea of Internet on Railway platforms, moving trains and smaller towns will be well received as these centres are not serviced at present," he said.

Stating that the possibilities of generating revenues from the surplus bandwidth were "virtually endless," Mr Chopra said that a couple of multi-system operators (large-scale cable TV distributors) had approached RailTel to use their network.

"Using the RailTel network, these large cable operators can offer a large number of channels in the smaller cities without having to set up elaborate satellite receiving equipment. With the emergence of the conditional access system (CAS), they may even offer special screening of movies on a pay-per-view basis," he said, adding that RailTel would soon initiate talks with television companies to explore the opportunity.

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