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Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that Free WI-FI Services are available at over six thousand railway stations across India so far. In a written reply in the Rajya Sabha today, he said, these are available to the general public free of cost for the first half an hour of any day. Mr. Vaishnaw said, provision of Wi-Fi at railway stations facilitates Railway passengers in accessing the Internet while at the stations.
The Minister added, Wi-Fi at Railway stations is helping the public to avail online services and information, thereby contributing towards Digital India initiative of the Government. The total data usage on these stations is of the order of over 97 Tera bytes per month approximately.
Indian Railways (IR) is a government-owned-railway system under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India’s national railway system. It manages the Fourth-largest railway network in the world by size, with a route length of 67,956 km (42,226 miles) as of 31 March 2020. 45,881 km (28,509 miles) or 71 percent of all the broad-gauge routes are electrified with 25 kV 50 Hz AC electric traction as of 1 April 2021.
In the fiscal year ending March 2020, Indian Railways carried 808.6 crore (8.086 billion) passengers and transported 121.23 crore (1.2123 billion) tonnes of freight.[4] It runs 1 lakh (100,000) passenger trains daily, on both long-distance and suburban routes, covering 7,325 stations across India.[4] Mail or Express trains, the most common types of trains, run at an average speed of 50.6 km/h (31.4 mph). Suburban EMUs run at an average speed of 37.5 km/h (23.3 mph). Ordinary passenger trains (incl. mixed) run at an average speed of 33.5 km/h (20.8 mph).[4] The maximum speed of passenger trains varies, with the Gatimaan Express running at a peak speed of 160 km/h (99 mph).