In a move towards monetisation of its web services at railway stations, state-run RailTel Corporation of India has launched higher speed paid Wi-Fi service at 4,073 stations from which it expects to earn an annual income of Rs 10-15 crore as soon as Covid-associated travel restrictions ease and footfall at stations becomes common.
RailTel has began prepaid plans for working with its Railwire Wi-Fi facility, which gives 30 minutes of free of charge Wi-Fi per day at 1 mbps speed and a nominal charge for availing a greater speed of up to 34 mbps. The charge ranges from Rs 10 for 5GB per day, Rs 15 for 10 GB per day, Rs 20 for 10 GB/5 days, Rs 30 for 20 GB/5 days, Rs 40 for 20 GB/10 days, Rs 50 for 30 GB/ 10 days and Rs 70 for 60 GB/30 days. This can be paid on-line by way of net banking, wallet and credit card. Currently, web service is obtainable at 5,950 plus stations across the nation and is accessible to any person with a smartphone and an active connection.
“RailTel will launch the prepaid plans for all 5,950 Wi-Fi-enabled stations across the country this financial year,” Puneet Chawla, chairman & managing director, RailTel, mentioned at a virtual press interaction. The listed mini-ratna public sector enterprise below IR, delivering bandwidth, Internet and worth added IT services, entered the marketplace in February 2021 with a `819-crore initial public providing, as component of the government’s divestment programme.
RailTel has a present order book of Rs 4,000 crore from projects alone and with the inclusion of telecom services and information centre services, this would quantity to an assured income of Rs 7,000 crore in the next couple of years, according to Chawla. The organization also has plans to earn more than Rs 60 crore from its content on demand initiative which will be obtainable in all premium, express, mail and suburban trains of IR. Besides this, the organization has won an order worth Rs 105.82 crore from IR and received an advance buy order amounting to Rs 25.46 crore per annum from Bharat Sanchar Nigam for commissioning of the point-to-point hyperlinks.