RailWire Wi-Fi by RailTel is now live at 1,600 railway stations across the country, with Santa Cruz railway station in Mumbai becoming the 1,600th station to become a RailWire Wi-Fi zone, Western Railway said on Wednesday.

RailTel Corporation, a ‘Mini Ratna (category-I)’ PSU, is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country, owning a pan-India optic fibre network on exclusive Right of Way (ROW) along Railway tracks.

RailWire is a retail broadband initiative of RailTel, which envisages extending broadband and application services to the public.

“In order to fulfil the promise of bringing fast and free Wi-Fi at all stations (except the halt stations) within a year, team RailTel is tirelessly working to achieve the target and in this process, WR’s Santa Cruz station became the 1600th railway station of the Indian Railways to be equipped with RailWire Wi-Fi connectivity,” WR said in a statement.

WR CPRO (Chief Public Relations Officer) Ravinder Bhakar said Reay Road station of the Central Railway became the 1000th station to be covered under the free wi-fi facility two days back.

“Now Santa Cruz station has become the 1,600th station in the country to have fast, free RailWire Wi-Fi,” he said.

RailTel CMD, Puneet Chawla, termed the development as an outstanding achievement.

“RailTel has provided high speed Wi-Fi at 985 stations with own/other funding and at 415 A, A1 and C category stations, associating Google as the technology partner for radio access, while using the RailTel backbone for broadband connectivity. RailTel has also completed the work of providing Wi-Fi to 200 stations with the support of the Universal Service Obligatory Fund of GoI,” Chawla said.

RailTel started providing the free public Wi-Fi service at Indian railway stations with a vision of turning Railway stations into a platform for digital inclusion. The idea behind providing free Wi-Fi to these very small stations catering to mainly rural/low population density areas, is to provide the people a modern Wi-Fi facility.

Explaining the modalities of using Wi-Fi network, the statement said the user has to switch on the Wi-Fi mode in the smartphone and select the RailWire Wi-Fi network.

“After the RailWire homepage network automatically appears on the smartphone, the user has to enter his or her mobile number on this homepage. The user will get a one-time password (OTP) in form of an SMS in the message box, which has to be entered in the home page of RailWire. After entering the OTP, users will be able to access high-speed Internet and can start browsing,” it stated.