Pune: The railway passengers at Pune junction are busy downloading movies, songs and watching serials from the free Wi-Fi service provided by the Indian Railways while waiting for their trains. The passengers consume average 60 terabytes (TB) every month. However, Pune is far behind from Sealdah, Patna and Gorakhpur in data consumption.
The Wi-Fi service available since March 2016 is getting a good response. The facility is provided by the RailTel Corporation of India in association with global information technology giant Google.
“The RailWire Wi-Fi at Pune station was commissioned in March 2016. Since the commencement of the service, Pune station has witnessed a very high number of RailWire Wi-Fi users,” said Sucharita Pradhan, spokesperson of RailTel Corporation.
“The average monthly users for Pune station are around 2 lakh with a total monthly average consumption of 60 TB data. This is the average data for 2018,” the spokesperson added.
The RailTel had conducted a survey in April and found that Pune was in the top 10 list in the country for consuming Internet. As per the data provided by RailTel, around 10,000 users consumed two terabytes (TB) data in April this year.
Now, the figure has been changed. According to the spokesperson, “On an all India basis, for October 2018, Howrah, New Delhi, Sealdah, Patna, Secunderabad, Chennai Central, and Gorakhpur are some of the top stations in terms of data consumption. The highest data consumption in one station is 150+ TB per month.”
The data consumption is based on the number of videos downloaded by users. It cannot be estimated just on the basis of users of the website. The passengers in Pune consumed 2 TB data in April, which shows they are watching online videos and downloading videos.
“Most of the passengers arriving at Pune junction are using the Wi-Fi service. Around 1,500 to 2,000 passengers are asking every day for extending the service for more hours. Sometimes, they complain about the slow speed. We try to provide good speed, but there are thousands of users using the service. It shows that the passengers are giving a good response,” said an officer of RailTel deputed at Pune Junction.
“We always conduct surveys at the station where the service is available. Officers available at Pune Junction provide us feedback of passengers using the facility,” said the officer.
