Railways to introduce Internet on trains

27 June 2003, UNI

Rail passengers can kill travel boredom by surfing the Internet in trains on some of the important routes of Indian Railways soon.

The Railtel Corporation of India has successfully tested the technology for providing broad band Internet on running trains for the first time in the world. "It will be introduced soon in important rail routes," Railways Minister Nitish Kumar said on Thursday.

Speaking to newspersons here, after commissioning the optic fibre communication link between Bangalore-Secunderabad, Secunderabad- Vijayawada-Chennai and Chennai-Gooty-Bangalore through video conference, he said Railtel would operate the Internet on moving trains by providing prepaid cards. Passengers could utilise the fixed kiosks in trains or use their own laptops or palmtops for surfing the Net, he added.

The Minister would inaugurate the first Internet cafe of Railtel in New Delhi station on Friday. Depending upon its success, 200 more railway stations would be provided with Internet cafes.

As on date, Railtel had provided 20,564 km of optic fibre cable, establishing connectivity between three metro cities in the West _ Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Pune _ and three cities in the South _ Chennai, Secunderabad and Bangalore. The connectivity linking other major metros such as New Delhi-Mumbai, New Delhi-Kolkata, Mumbai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Chennai and Mumbai-Chennai would be established within the next two months.

Kumar said the cost of infrastructure on building optic fibre corridor (OFC) would not be passed on to the passengers. The total expenditure was expected to be Rs 1,200 crore.

He said the Railways have a massive unutilised bandwidth which could be commercially utilised by leasing it out to other telecom operators. Railtel would look into the commercial aspects, the minister said, adding that the southern region had made a beginning and anticipated to earn Rs 50 crore this year by way of leasing bandwidth and tower space to the telecom service providers.

The OFC could also be used to set up most modern communication facilities even at accident spots for effective relief measures, he added.

Using the OFC corridor, continuous cellular phone coverage could be provided to passengers, besides facilitating computerised reservation ticket even at roadside stations.

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