RailTel launches prepaid plans for Wi-Fi at more than 4000 railway stations

RailTel has launched prepaid plans for its Railwire Wi-Fi at 4000 plus railway stations across the country.

"RailTel has launched prepaid plans for its Railwire Wi-Fi at 4000 plus Railway stations across India. Going forward, a passenger can use 30 minutes free wi-fi per day at 1 mbps speed at these 4000 plus railway stations. For using the Wi-Fi facility at a higher speed of upto 34 mbps, the user needs to choose a plan with a higher speed by paying a nominal fee," read a press statement by the Indian Railways on Thursday.

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 plans online.

With a vision of turning railway stations into a platform for digital inclusion, RailTel Corporation of India Limited (RailTel), a Mini Ratna (Category - I) Central Public Sector Enterprise, under the Ministry of Railways, has started providing high-speed Wi-Fi service at railway stations.

The Wi-Fi service is currently available at 5950 plus stations across the country and Wi-Fi at the station premises is accessible to anyone with a smartphone and an active connection (post verification through OTP sent via SMS).

During pre-COVID time, more than 2.9 crore people were using the service monthly. Once the situation normalizes and footfall at stations becomes regular, a revenue of Rs 10-15 crore annually is expected from the paid Wi-Fi.

Talking about the plan launch, Puneet Chawla, CMD RailTel said, "We did a detailed trial run of Prepaid WiFi at 20 Stations in Uttar Pradesh and based on the response and detailed testing, we launched this plan at 4000 plus more stations across India. We intend to launch the prepaid plans for all the stations with our RailWire Wi-Fi this financial year".

( With inputs from ANI )