Google station to launch free Wi-Fi in smart cities

MUMBAI: Months after enabling high-speed internet access at more than 200 railway stations in India, Google now will expand Google Station to various cities across the country. Google Station currently offers public Wi-Fi at 227 Indian railway stations is looking to expand its reach to smart cities.

Caeser Sengupta, the Vice President of Product Management and Next billion users (NBU) at Google, revealed that there are over 7.5 million users who use high-speed internet access through the Google Station programme in India. “The programme provides Internet to 227 stations in the country, with 22 stations are going live by this month,” he said. With this achievement, Google is on track to connect all 400 stations next year that was planned late last year.

Caeser Sengupta said, “Google Station is helping connect more people to affordable and reliable Internet. Public Wi-Fi hotspots, we believe, are the internet cafe of the mobile generation – a daily place where you go to get high-quality internet to download videos and apps, whatever you choose to do. And even with the amazing progress on expanding mobile Internet in India, we are still finding that public Wi-Fi remains a crucial step in getting high-quality affordable internet to everyone.”

He added, “Now Google Station is expanding outside of railway stations, into cities and other countries like Indonesia.”

After launching Google station at 53 railway stations in the country in September, Google had planned to scale up the public Wi-Fi network to 100 stations by the end of 2016. However, after reaching the mark of 100 stations in December, the search engine expanded and set to add as many as 400 stations by 2018.

Currently, Google is in a partnership with the government’s enterprise RailTel Corporation to provide fast Internet access on mobile devices through Google Station. However, with the upcoming expansion programmes the search giant is also planning to tie up with new ISPs.

In August, Google Station entered Indonesia to help improve access to the internet at local railway stations. Google partnered with CBN and Fiberstar to bring high-speed public Wi-Fi for Indonesian users.