Google says that their experience across 19 railway stations in the country, especially in tier II cities, is that more than 1.5 million Indians are enjoying its high-speed wifi network. Last week, in four major stations, namely Sealdah, Lucknow junction, Lucknow and Gorakhpur junction, the technology giant Google has rolled out its wifi service. In a blogpost it is said that now there are 19 stations that enjoy the wifi service. In a post Google said while we are only at approximately 20 per cent of the rollout schedule for this year, the response has been phenomenal… At this scale, this project is a shining example of bridging the digital divide.
It added that a big chunk of the country continues to access the Internet on a narrow band network, limiting experience of Internet to basic activities. It noted that easy and affordable access to full fidelity broadband network continues to be a challenge in India and is throttling the economic impact that Internet can have. At Mumbai Central within a week of launch, Google noticed that 1 lakh users got connected to the network. And they saw an exponential jump in the consumption of the network as they started rolling out the network at more stations. They noticed that the maximum consumption of data was in in tier II cities where consumers faced a challenge to get access to high speed broadband. It also said that the per capita consumption of data in tier II cities far exceeds consumption we are seeing in tier I cities.
It further said today in India, the most dominant means of access to the Internet is 3G pack in a day. Even though users are travelling, the average consumption per user on the network is 15 times the data they would consume on a 3G pack in a day. Google observes that most of the users in tier II cities use the network for looking up and applying online for jobs while the primary usage is focused on infotainment.
