Patna, October 17: Patna station, under Danapur Division of East Central Railway, is be the first station in Bihar to have free Wi-Fi facility. This railway station is one of the crowded ones with more than 200 trains passing through it daily.
According to RailTel officials, people are using free Wi-Fi for Youtube at Patna, followed by Wikipedia. “More than anything, porn sites have been watched and downloaded by the people at Patna railway station.” Some people have been using free Wi-Fi to download apps, and Bollywood and Hollywood films also.
At present, RailTel is providing 1 gigabite Wi-Fi at the Patna railway station but planning to increase to 10 gigabites due to slow speed of internet in view of more use of it by the passengers as well as youths, who regularly spend hours to enjoy free internet.
Free Wi-Fi service was launched last month at Patna, along with three more railway stations, across India. These stations are Patna in Bihar, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Ranchi in Jharkhand.
To date free Wi-FI facility has been launched at 23 railway stations in the country. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said the government plans to introduce the service at all major railway stations in the country in the next three years.
“By this year-end, free Wi-Fi facility will be launched at 100 major railway stations. We will achieve our target of 400 stations in three years.
Once in place, it will be the largest public Wi-Fi system in the world,” Prabhu said.
The service was commissioned by RailTel, in association with Google, for providing high-speed internet to rail commuters at these places. The service has been provided under ‘Railwire’, the retail broadband distribution model of Railtel.
Mumbai Central was the first railway station in the country to enjoy free Wi-Fi facility. Last year, Google India and Indian Railways joined hands to introduce high-speed Wi-Fi network at 400 stations in the country.
