RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. is a wholly owned

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a s ...

of the

Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tot ...

Ministry of Railways A Ministry of Railways is a Cabinet department that exists or has existed in many Commonwealth states as well as others. It generally occurs in countries where railroad transportation is a particularly important part of the national infrastructure. ...

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

. It provides

broadband In telecommunications, broadband is wide bandwidth data transmission which transports multiple signals at a wide range of frequencies and Internet traffic types, that enables messages to be sent simultaneously, used in fast internet connections. ...

and

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

services. RailTel was formed in September 2000 with the objective of creating a nationwide broadband, telecom and multimedia network, and to modernise train control operation and safety system of

. RailTel's network passes through around 5,000 stations across the country, covering all major commercial centres.

History

The Indian Railways (IR) was initially solely dependent on the Department of Telecom (now BSNL) for their control and administrative communication circuits. To increase circuit efficiency, the Railways began building up its own communication systems from early 1970s based on overhead telephone lines, quad cables and

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ran ...

signalling. In 1983, the Railway Reforms Committee decided to introduce

optical fibre cable A fiber-optic cable, also known as an optical-fiber cable, is an assembly similar to an electrical cable, but containing one or more optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fiber elements are typically individually coated with ...

(OFC) based communications in IR to provide safety, reliability, availability and serviceability through use of a dedicated network. The decision was also taken to create a network independent of the DoT and replace the existing microwave telecom systems (60% of which had reached end of life) with OFC. Indian Railways commissioned the first OFC on the Churchgate–Virar line in Mumbai in 1988 for train operation and control purpose, which consisted of 60 km of network across 28 stations. The network was expanded in Central India with the commissioning of 900 km of OFC network in 1991–92 across Durg–Nagpur, Nagpur–Itarsi and Itarsi–Bhusaval sections of the

Howrah–Nagpur–Mumbai line The Howrah–Nagpur–Mumbai line (also known as Mumbai–Kolkata line) is a railway line in India connecting Kolkata and Mumbai via Nagpur. The railway line was opened to traffic in 1900. Sections The trunk line has been treated in more deta ...

, and in Eastern India with the commissioning of 60 km of OFC network in Tatanagar–Chakradhrapur section of the same line. The second National Telecom Policy in 1999 opened the National Long-Distance segment under favourable licensing conditions with revenue sharing to assist mobile network operators to spread their networks across India. In 2000, the Government announced the formation of a telecom corporation to build a nationwide broadband multimedia telecommunication network. RailTel was established on 26 September 2000 as a

Public Sector Undertaking A state-owned enterprise (SOE) is a government entity which is established or nationalised by the ''national government'' or ''provincial government'' by an executive order or an act of legislation in order to earn profit for the governmen ...

(PSU), wholly owned by the Indian Railways.

Projects

WiFi and WiMax

RailTel, formerly in collaboration with

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

, provides free

WiFi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio waves ...

Internet access at selected railway stations across India. Google chose railway stations as the location to provide free WiFi because stations have access to a reliable power supply and

fibre Fiber or fibre (from la, fibra, links=no) is a natural or artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The strongest engineering materials often incorporate ...

provided by RailTel, and because the passengers at a station come from all demographics of India. The free WiFi service was launched at

Mumbai Central railway station Mumbai Central (formerly Bombay Central, station code: MMCT) is a major railway station on the Western line, situated in Mumbai, Maharashtra in an area known by the same name. It serves as a major stop for both Local and Inter-City/Express tr ...

in January 2016. In April 2016, the service was expanded to nine more railway stations. In June 2016, Google announced that free WiFi was available at 19 stations in India and was being used by over 1.5 million people. In September 2016, Google announced a public WiFi initiative called

Google Station Google Station was a Google service that allowed partners to roll out Wi-Fi hotspots in public places by providing software and advice on hardware to turn fiber connections into Wi-Fi. It was only implemented in India and Indonesia but in March ...

. The company planned to expand free WiFi coverage under the initiative to locations such as cafes and malls across India, and later expand worldwide. In June 2018, Google announced that its Free WiFi project was now running at 400 Indian railway stations. As a result, there were more than 8 million people accessing the internet each month via the project. The partnership between Google and Railwire ended in May 2020. Now Railwire alone provides free WiFi for 30mins at low speed and further paid plans at 34Mbps to more than 5000 railway stations in India.

Railwire

Based on its nationwide fibre network, RailTel offers RailWire, a joint venture with

managed service provider Managed services is the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the re ...

s to provide voice, video and multimedia access on a single connection at a customer's home or office.

Awards

RailTel received the 12th National Awards for Excellence in Cost Management 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Railtel Corporation Of India E-government in India Railway companies of India Government-owned companies of India Companies based in Gurgaon Technology in society Telecommunications companies of India Indian companies established in 2000 2000 establishments in Haryana Companies listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Companies listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange Government-owned telecommunications companies