Indian Railways' RailTel to launch Railwire rural broadband service

Aiming to provide seamless state-of-the-art communication network, RailTel - the telecom arm of Indian railways - will launch Railwire, a high capacity broadband service, in rural and remote areas of the country.

"Railwire will be launched across the country. Our aim is to reach out to rural and remote areas of the country at affordable rate," RailTel Managing Director B K Bahuguna said.

Currently Railwire service has been launched as pilot project in limited areas of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala having over 6,000 customers.

"Railwire service has been designed to provide an open source content delivery platform for providing various services including Broadband Internet, IP telephony, e-HealthCare, e-Education, and other content driven services like gaming, video on demand services to individuals and small and medium business segment using cable operator's infrastructure," Bahuguna said.

RailTel has built nationwide optical fibre cable (OFC) based broadband and multimedia network using railway?s seamless right of way with the objective of modernising rail network.

RailTel has constructed about 42,000 km of OFC network in the country, and work on another 7,500 km is in various stage of completion. The OFC network presently reaches to over 4,200 towns and cities, including rural areas.

As part of its expansion plans, RailTel is exploring ways to facilitate broadband through WiFi at railway stations for convenience of passengers.