Internet major Google and state-run RailTel Corp of India have joined hands to equip 400 railways station in the country with high speed Wi-Fi networks, making it one of the largest public Wi-Fi projects in the world. The Wi-Fi project was announced by Google’s India-born CEO Sunder Pichai after his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The deployment of Wi-Fi networks will start from October 2015 with Mumbai Central being the first station to get covered. The Mumbai Central station is expected to be ready for public use by mid-October. The initial target is to make Internet accessible to one crore passengers at 100 busiest railway stations in India by mid-2016, and then later on expand it to 300 other stations.

The Wi-Fi will be free for the first 30 minutes over a 24-hour period. It will be a high speed network capable of delivering HD video streaming services and passengers will be able to download a movie in 4 minutes before they embark on long journeys. Beyond 30 minutes of usage, customers will have to pay for the services.

Railtel has built over 45,000 km of optic fibre network across the railways network in India, connecting over 4,500 cities and towns and over 5,000 railway stations in the country. It is looking to monetise its fiber network through partnerships with telecom operators. RailTel will also use the Railways Wi-Fi project with Google to publicise its own retail broadband brand RailWire.