First cyber cafe opened at Delhi Rly. station

27 June 2003, The Hindu

The first of the cyber cafes to be set up at 200 railway stations for passengers to access Internet and other facilities was opened at New Delhi railway station today.

After inaugurating it, Railway Minister Nitish Kumar told reporters that the Railways was witnessing a "revolution" in terms of better facilities for passengers.

It has also been decided to provide Internet facilities in trains and one of the trains would have this facility during the current financial year, he said.

The Minister said the cyber cafe on platform number 12 of New Delhi railway station was powered by a broadband internet connectivity of 256 kbps and would be operated by Railtel Corporation.

The Cyber Cafe has facilities for web-browsing, e-mailing, gaming, internet telephony, scanning, printing, photocopying, faxing and video-conferencing.

Kumar said BSNL and Railtel would enter into a Memorandum of Understanding to use each other's facilities, and that the Ministry also wanted to have such an arrangement with MTNL.

He made it clear that there would be no technical problems in transferring the requisite assets of the Railways to the Railtel for its smooth functioning and said the telecommunication arm of the Railways had already mobilised Rs 1 crore after setting up networks at Secunderabad, Bangalore and Chennai.

(PTI photo shows Union Railway Minister Nitish Kumar surfing on a computer after inaugurating a cyber cafe in New Delhi Railway station on Friday.)

Top