HI-SPEED WiFi In Railway Stations

PM Modi in Silicon Valley: WiFi in railway stations, broadband for villages and more.

PM's Silicon visit has also come with some key announcements like WiFi in railway stations, broadband in villages and along with discussions on future possibilities of new technologies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is one of the first Indian leaders to interact with the top CEOs and business leaders of Silicon Valley, during his second US stint. PM Modi has met Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Alphabet’s CEO and Google co-founder Larry Page (the holding company of Google), Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Qualcomm’s Executive Chairman Paul E. Jacobs, CISCO’s John Chambers and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk on this trip, making it a power-packed trip for any Indian leader.

The PM’s visit has also come with some key announcements and along with discussions on future possibilities of certain new technologies coming to India. We take a look at certain key announcements made during the course of this visit.

Google and WiFi at 500 Railway stations: Google has announced that it will help India set up base for free Wi-Fi at 500 railway stations. “We are expanding our public Wi-Fi hotspots. For example, we want to ensure that free Wi Fi is not only there in airport lounges, but also on our railway platforms. Teaming up with Google, we will cover 500 railway stations in a short time,” PM Modi said at a dinner hosted by Silicon Valley CEOs in his honour.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that initially high speed Internet will be provided at 100 railway stations by end of 2016 and later to 400 more by the next year. In an official blogpost, Google’s Pichai wrote,” The network will expand quickly to cover 100 of the busiest stations in India before the end of 2016, with the remaining stations following in quick succession. Even with just the first 100 stations online, this project will make Wi-Fi available for the more than 10 million people who pass through every day. This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users.” The project will start with Chennai.