Enjoy Free Wi-Fi Internet On Your Train Journey in India from Today

Gizbot had earlier told you about Railways Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal proposed free Wi-fi facility for some trains. Well the Indian Railways has launched Wi-Fi Internet services, today for the New Delhi train, Howrah Rajdhani. The facility is expected to be provided to 50 other trains.

Train passengers will now be able to browse the internet, check email, use video services like Youtube and even play online games, while traveling. The Wi-Fi service is suppose to provide passengers, 4 Mbps download bandwidth and 512 Kbps upload bandwidth. These speeds might get reduced as the bandwidth will be shared by multiple passengers in the train. By the way, access to porn sites will be blocked.

Nirav Dave, Managing Director, Techno Sat Comm (India) Ltd, the company responsible for providing the facility, said the network has the capability of prioritizing traffic, in case there is excess demand.

Nirav in a conversation with Business Line said " Critical communication applications like email or online transactions will be given top priority. Video downloads and gaming would be last, if there is a crunch on the bandwidth availability

"We had done trials with 120 passengers simultaneously accessing different types of Internet services on a 2 Mbps bandwidth and we found that there were no issues as far as download speeds are concerned," he added.

The internet facility will be provided by passengers two-way satellite hybrid with 2G/3G and Wi-Fi. The system makes use of on-board satellite tracking antenna, multiband antenna and Wi-Fi broadcasting equipment to provide seamless connectivity.

How to gain access to the internet facility?

Passengers will have to provide mobile number, PNR number and Government ID. Once this is done they will receive a unique password via SMS on their mobiles. Passengers can access the Wi-Fi network using the password.

There is news that the railways is planning on offering multimedia entertainment with Internet Television services in the near future. Also, the railways is looking to expand it's services to other Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto express trains based on how well it is received.

Source: BusinessLine