MOUNTAINVIEW, Calif.�There are now more Internet users in India than any other country in the world aside from China. But incredibly, there are still nearly a billion people in India with no access to the Internet.
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Google’s new CEO, India-born Sundar Pichai, said Google would like to help get these next billion Indians online so they can access the entire Web and all of its information and opportunity.
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“That’s why…on the occasion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to our U.S. headquarters, and in line with his Digital India initiative, we announced a new project to provide high-speed public Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across India,” he said.
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Working with Indian Railways, which operates one of the world’s largest railway networks, and RailTel, which provides Internet services as RailWire via its extensive fiber network along many of these railway lines, Google’s Access & Energy team plans to bring the first stations online in the coming months.� The network will expand quickly to cover 100 of the busiest stations in India before the end of 2016, with the remaining stations following in quick succession, according to indiatimes.com.
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Pichai said even with just the first 100 stations online, the project will make Wi-Fi available for the more than 10 million people who pass through every day.
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“This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users,” he said.
