RailTel Logo


BSNL revolutionized the Indian approached to Internet by introducing DataOne service via ADSL technology. It is seen to many as revolution because of the area covered by BSNL. BSNL happened to be the largest PSTN service provider of India by virtually having RJ-11 telephone wire every where in the county. Hence they were able to make broadband available to every one, even for the person leaving at remotest corners of the country.

Now it seems the Indian Railway is coming to the party. Indian Railway happen to have one of the largest OCF network of the country. Up till recently, Indian Railway decided that as because, much of their bandwidth is not been utilized hence to generate more revenue they shall offer end user Internet solutions.

An Indian Railway Cyber Cafe

They have successfully tested end user domestic and corporate services at Bangalore and presently operating 250 large state of the art Cyber Cafes in 250 major stations of 83 cities nation wide. They are presently under process to deploy Wifi at 500 major railway stations nation wide and to provide wireless Internet at all important trains (Rajdhani / Shatabdi / Jan Shatabdi express).


What makes this news interesting that while replying to ChotoCheeta.com, Indian Railway end user service support (Railwire.in) have said that they would be now moving to second phase in which Kolkata as one of the city would have end user ISP solution from Railtel.in under their PAN-India roll out plan.

Kolkata will come under our pan-India rollout plans. From the customer support team we at present do not have good visibility into the exact dates and timelines. However, you could expect us to reach Kolkata by end of this year or early next year.

Indian Railways OFC Network map (As of Feb 2007)

Indian Railways have a total of 50,000 KM (as of Feb, 2007) of optic fiber network. Virtually where ever they have broadgage lines, they have their OFC running beside it. Hence this allows them to provide some really attractive rates. Bandwidth ranging from 256kbps to 155 mbps. Certainly this can be a really good alternate to any of the present running ISP, major players like BSNL (DataOne Broadband) / MTNL / Reliance / Sify / TATAIndicom).

Railwire.in end user ISP tariff for unlimited data uses,

256 Kbps Rs. 320
512 Kbps Rs. 620
1 Mbps Rs. 920
2 Mbps Rs. 1220
4 Mbps Rs. 2120
8 Mbps Rs. 3620
16 Mbps Rs. 6920
32 Mbps Rs. 13520

Therefore the wait begins for the RailTel service !!!

Related posts:

  1. Quick look at BSNL 8MBPS – India’s Fastest domestic broadband connection In just 5 years we have climbed a long way up in the Internet speed ladder. I can remember...
  2. Indian government using 110mb.com for their official web sites Any department of Indian government, which is willing to run any “e” service, has option for some exclusive tools...
  3. Paypal makes it mandatory for Indian users to enter PAN card number Yes, Indian government is now eying to earn their share of income by enforcing TAX to free-lance web related workers...
  4. Watch / Stream live IPL T20 (Twenty – Twenty) matchs free via Internet IPL T20 2010 Team standings and points table Yes, you are reading right, legally you can watch or stream IPL...
  5. Vodafone (Hutch) India confirms iPhone 3G 8 GB / 16 GB Indian Rupees (INR) Value Finally Vodafone have broken their silence over official iPhone pricing in India, announcing that Apple iPhone 3G would be...