West Bengal's Midnapore railway station becomes 5000th station with free Wi-Fi

New Delhi: Midnapore railway station in West Bengal has become the 5000th station in the country to have free public Wi-Fi, officials said on Saturday.

RailTel, a PSU under the railways, started providing free Wi-Fi from Mumbai Central station in January 2016.

In a span of 44 months, RailTel has successfully provided Wi-Fi at 5000 stations across the country, the railways said.

Talking about the journey so far, Puneet Chawla, CMD/RailTel, said, "We are now just few hundred stations away from achieving the ambitious target of providing free public Wi-Fi at all Indian railway stations (except the halt ones).

"The dedication of the RailTel team, our partners and support from the Indian railways has made it possible. The free Wi-Fi is becoming more and more popular with users.

"The month of August 2019 saw total 1.14 crores of user logins in 'RailWire' Wi-Fi services with 10192.55 TB of data usage across all stations," the railways said.

Out of total of about 5000 stations commissioned so far, 70 per cent are in rural areas.

During the month of August, a total of 11.25 lakh users availed the Rural Wi-Fi services at 3406 rural railway stations with 2305 TB of data download.

Free Wi-Fi service to passengers are being provided under 'RailWire'- the retail broadband initiative of RailTel catering to enterprises, SMEs and homes.