Although it was planned well in advance, one of the most concrete announcements from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi s whirlwind trip to Silicon Valley was that Google plans to equip Indian railway stations with public Wi-Fi.
This is a big deal in India, where a huge and aging railroad network carries millions of people across the country each day. Hosting Modi at the Googleplex on Sunday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized the railway s importance when he wistfully recalled his college days taking the day-long trip from Chennai to Kharagpur, where he attended one of the Indian Institutes of Technology. There are about 7,500 stations, and Google will provide high-speed Internet service at 400 hundred of them — starting with the busiest 100 in the next year.
As the company noted in a blog post, it will be partnering with two government entities — Indian Railways and Internet provider RailTel — to lay down the fiber network and help advance Modi s Digital India agenda to get more of the country s nearly 1.3 billion people online.
For more on Modi s visit, see our story and photo slideshow from Sunday s events.
Above: Map of first 100 Indian Railways stations that Google plans to equip with public Wi-Fi. (Image courtesy of Google)
