I dont see how wifi in 400 stations is going to help anyone. If the stations are in well populated areas, then mobile internet should not be a problem in any case. In rural and lesser developed areas, wifi means nothing to consumers. The younger generation does have wifi smartphones, thanks to Chinese companies putting out dead cheap ones. However, of what use is the wifi in railway stations, I fail to understand.
If the use is for train information or related stuff, the govt. has to maintain that info on screens and notice boards.
If it's for talking to others, well, that too is of limited use. Most people wait for maybe a couple of hours before they board onto a train.
If this is to help people waiting in lounges, then I'd rather they (govt.) monetize it. Especially for those waiting in AC class lounges. In anycase, no one here really plans for long layovers in railway stations.
I just dont get of what use is wifi in railway stations.
Better thing for the govt. would have been to invite and pay google for creating a distributed fibre optic network across India, connecting rural villages, using their expertise in handling large amounts of data.
I agree with your light gray comment. Coming from San Francisco, I've been working in India for the past month and have made a few unexpected observations:
1. Despite scarcity of 3G and land line data, consumers hardly budget their usage; when the network is available, it's every-man-for-himself trying to watch youtube & consume other media
2. Train loading & unloading is incredibly fast. This can make the station a hectic place to be, even for locals.
3. The same Uber vs Local Taxi (In this case, Auto Rickshaws aka Tuk-Tuks) battle exists here, with Uber charging less than they pay drivers to price out the competition
4. Young people, boys and girls, want to be either engineers or doctors.
Train Station Wi-Fi will be great for already-online mobile users to briefly consume content and call an Uber home, but that's not what's going to 'get the next billion Indians online to access more opportunities.' People love free Wi-Fi, but this RailWire contract is a bigger win for Google than anyone else. Let's see some secondary schools come online!
Well you have to start somewhere. If they plan to build their own fibre in the future, then this is just a test run to see usage patterns and test the infrastructure. Of course you're not going to put the fibre in some unused rural area. I don't think this is a charity move from Google, and they didn't really disguise it as one (unlike Facebook).
While you're being downvoted (probably due to HN aversion to "downer debbies" for tech stuff), the question is legitimate. Why just train stations (the 400 part is just a beginning I assume). I was thinking along the same lines. One plausible answer seems to be pragmatism. There's a govt. agency running fiber along train tracks all over India (http://railwire.co.in/who-we-are.html) and this allows Google to light up the fiber using their ISP expertise and have 400 test nodes to begin with. Think of it as potentially 400 new cities where Google (or some partner) could then start a googe fiber type ISP (but perhaps use wireless local loop for quicker results).
Free WiFi or for that matter anything free that comes at the expense of someone else is always a good politics. It fetches votes.
Of course, I assume that Indian government will monetise this service to some extent and also integrate it with the existing Rail infra to give better service to people. For example if I could simply book a Mumbai Local ticket on my phone while on station that will greatly reduce the long queues in front of Ticket windows and Ticket Vending machines.
If the shops on railway platform could accept Apple Pay or Android Pay that would be great too.
If everyone who can afford a phone with WiFi can afford a mobile Internet plan, then India is better in that regard than my EU country. I know many people who can only afford to read their email, apply to jobs, etc on WiFi hotspots.
If the use is for train information or related stuff, the govt. has to maintain that info on screens and notice boards.
If it's for talking to others, well, that too is of limited use. Most people wait for maybe a couple of hours before they board onto a train.
If this is to help people waiting in lounges, then I'd rather they (govt.) monetize it. Especially for those waiting in AC class lounges. In anycase, no one here really plans for long layovers in railway stations.
I just dont get of what use is wifi in railway stations.
Better thing for the govt. would have been to invite and pay google for creating a distributed fibre optic network across India, connecting rural villages, using their expertise in handling large amounts of data.