Google promises Wi-Fi to 100 railway stations in India

Google CEO Sundar Pichai kicked off the “Google for India” event in New Delhi, laying out a vision and sharing product updates around the company’s long-term commitment to one of its largest growth markets. “We will also build a huge new campus in Hyderabad”.

Some of the bigger initiatives to bring access to India include the company’s partnership with Indian Railways to bring Wi-Fi to 400 stations, of which 100 stations will be covered by 2016 end, and project Loon, wherein high-altitude balloons will be used to bring wireless Internet in remote areas. Google promised to deliver Wi-Fi at about a hundred stations by December 2016. “To connect people in hard to reach regions that are scarcely populated and we are working to hopefully bring Project Loon to India in rural communities that have very few people connected to the Internet”, she said.

Google has proposed to partner with BSNL in “Internet Saathi” project which aims to promote internet usage in rural areas, Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here today.

As part of Google’s efforts to help women get online, Pichai said Google is expanding bicycle for women program nationally. The initiative saw Google work with local manufacturers – Lava, Micromax, Spice and Karbonn in India – to produce budget smartphones with a great software experience.

“From a pilot, we will now increase the programme to cowl three lakh villages in three years”, he said. The chrome bit stick is capable of turning any monitor into a computer helping users to access the internet. Google now employs 1500 people in India.

The company will be offering WiFi at 100 train stations in the country next year, starting with Mumbai Central in early January.

Google has also made its Maps and YouTube products partially available offline and created data-light versions of web pages that allow them to load more easily on slow Indian connections.

“Elaborating the same, Google Vice President (Access Strategy and Emerging Markets) Marian Croak said the company is “passionate” about building and deploying new Internet infrastructure around the world”. He noted that in 2016, there will more Android users in India than in the US. “What inspired me to join Google was the fact that Google search worked the same whether you were a Stanford professor or a poor kid in a small Indian city”, adding: “We want to get Indians connected to internet and for this we will take three-pronged approach”. Pichai also discussed how the new virtual keyboard will soon support 11 Indian languages.

“By 2018, more than 500M users will be online in India, from all 29 states, speaking over 23 languages”.