RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. is a "Miniratna" enterprise of Government of India focusing on providing broadband and VPN services. RailTel was formed in September 2000 with the objective of creating nationwide broadband, telecom and multimedia network, to modernise train control operation and safety system of Indian Railways. RailTel's network passes through around 5,000 stations across the country, covering all major commercial centres.
History
The Indian Railways was initially solely dependent on the Department of Telecom for their control and administrative communication circuits. To increase circuit efficiency, the Railways began building up its own communication systems from early 1970s based on overhead telephone lines, quad cables and microwave signalling. In 1983, the Railway Reforms Committee decided to introduce optical fibre cable based communications in IR to provide safety, reliability, availability and serviceability through use of a dedicated network. The decision was also taken to create a network independent of the DoT and replace the existing microwave telecom systems with OFC. Indian Railways commissioned the first OFC on the Churchgate–Virar line in Mumbai in 1988 for train operation and control purpose, which consisted of 60 km of network across 28 stations. The network was expanded in Central India with the commissioning of 900 km of OFC network in 1991–92 across Durg–Nagpur, Nagpur–Itarsi and Itarsi–Bhusaval sections of the Howrah–Nagpur–Mumbai line, and in Eastern India with the commissioning of 60 km of OFC network in Tatanagar–Chakradhrapur section of the same line. The second National Telecom Policy in 1999 opened the National Long-Distance segment under favourable licensing conditions with revenue sharing to assist mobile network operators to spread their networks across India. In 2000, the Government announced the formation of a telecom corporation to build a nationwide broadband multimedia telecommunication network. RailTel was established in September 2000 as a Public Sector Undertaking, wholly owned by the Indian Railways.
Projects
Wi-Fi and WiMax
RailTel, in collaboration with Google, provides free WiFi access at selected railways stations across India. Google chose railway stations as the location to provide free WiFi because stations have access to reliable power supply and fibre provided by RailTel, and because the passengers at a station come from all demographics of India. The free WiFi service was launched at Mumbai Central railway station in January 2016. In April 2016, the service was expanded to 9 more railway stations. In June 2016, Google announced that free Wi-Fi was available across 19 stations in India and was being used by over 1.5 million people. Google and RailTel plan to provide free WiFi at 100 railway stations across the country by the end of 2016. In September 2016, Google announced a public WiFi initiative called Google Station. Google plans to expand free WiFi coverage under the initiative to locations such as cafes and malls across India, and later expand worldwide. In June 2018, Google announced that it's Free Wi-Fi project is now powering 400 Indian railway stations. As a result, there are now more than 8 million people accessing the internet each month via the project.
Railwire
Based on its nationwide fibre network, RailTel offers various bandwidth intensive application to its customers. One such initiative is RailWire, a joint venture with MSOs to provide Voice, Video and Multimedia access on a single wire at a customer's home or office.
