Google has successfully wrapped up the prime objective of its Google Station initiative having now set up free WiFi hotspots across 400 railway stations in India. The project which began in 2015 was announced in a joint venture by Google, Indian Railways, and RailTel and now the search giant has set up its WiFi services at the 400th railway station which happens to be the Dibrugarh Railway station in Assam.
The milestone came as a post on Google’s blog with a couple videos of users who made the most of Google’s WiFi services. Google acknowledges that the high-speed public WiFi program was announced back in 2015 with the first WiFi installation made at the Mumbai Central in January 2016. This was followed by a global program that followed the same initiate which came to be known as the Google Station.
Marking the successful completion of the initiative, Google has installed its public WiFi system at Dibrugarh Railway station In Assam, northeast India. Google claims that 8 million people are accessing its internet service with an average of 350MB of data being used per session by each user. That’s as much as half an hour of a TV show with Google indicating that users engage in several sessions during the course of a day.
The first video uploaded on to the post is the story of Helen, a mother who drives an autorickshaw to give hers on the best education. While waiting for passengers at the Kollam railway station, Helen uses Google’s free WiFi service to gather study materials for her son.
The second video is that of Shrinath, a porter who works at the Ernakulam Junction station in Kochi. Pursuing his dream of being a civil servant, Shrinath would use Google Station’s free WiFi to study online and his efforts got him to score 82 percent in the Kerala Civil Service examination.
While celebrating on completing its 400 station landmark, the search giant notes that Google Station’s potential doesn’t end here and efforts to create more such opportunities remains “unfinished”. The company is now working on expanding its public WiFi service to beyond railway stations having already installed 150 Google Station hotspots across Pune, Maharashtra with more cities to be added to the list in the near future.
After its immense success in India, Google Station is now available in Mexico and Indonesia with more countries to follow in the long run.