As promised by Mr. Praveen Kumar Bansal in the Railway Budget announced earlier this year, Indian Railways has launched Free Wi-Fi service in the New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani Express starting today. In the coming few months, about 50 such trains are expected to get the same service.

Under this project, bandwidth of 4 Mbps Download and 512 Kbps Upload has been earmarked for all the passengers travelling in the train. So it means, actual speed per user would differ depending upon the actual no. of users logged in at a particular time. Also keeping in mind the real usage of this service, emailing and online transactions would be given high priority whereas things like chatting, video downloads and gaming would be the last priority. Also access to porn sites will be blocked.

To get maximum connectivity, Indian Railways through Techno Sat Comm (India) Ltd, the company providing the technology, has deployed 2 way satellite hybrid system with 2G/3G and Wi-Fi. Under this technology, Primary Internet connection would be established via satellite and when such link is not available, the router would then automatically switch to 2G or 3G links. This would help achieve maximum connectivity at all times.

Lastly, to access the Free Wi-Fi on the moving train, you will have to provide mobile number, PNR number, Government ID (election card, Aadhar etc) for getting unique password by SMS on your registered mobile number. This Free Wi-Fi password would be valid for the whole journey only.

Before the end of the Budget year, Indian Railway is planning to introduce similar service on all Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains. So from now on, Train journey would not be so boring…..

Via