RailTel to Unviel Net Kiosks at Platforms

RailTel Corporation of India, the bandwidth providing organization carved out of Indian Railways, is all set to launch its pilot project with the opening of 4 to 12 Internet kiosks at every platform in three railway sections for - Baroda -Ahmedabad, Ludhiana- Amritsar and Chennai-Madurai. The pilot project will be operational within a period of one month and after that the kiosks placed at these platforms will be operated with the help of pre-paid or Credit cards at the railway stations connected with optical fiber cables. "The prime objective of RailTel is to utilize the already available bandwidth in the country and provide better services to the customers of Indian Railway. We are also looking at utilizing the microwave towers for commercial purpose, we are in the process of leasing our towers to cellular operators and FM radio channels," said, AK Chopra, Managing Director at RailTel. He was in Lucknow to participate in the inauguration of Circular Railway for the Lucknow region. RailTel has already given more than 10 of its towers to a mobile operator in Hyderabad and is in the process of negotiation with some other operators in other states as well. "The idea is to provide the basic infrastructure. We already have a well maintained microwave infrastructure and its now time to utilize it to its maximum," he added. RailTel has a network of more than 600 towers nation wide, if used to their maximum all these towers are well poised to provide continuos coverage to travelling cell phone users. It may be recalled that RailTel Corporation was formed in the year 2000 specifically to facilitate OFC network within the Indian sub-continent for the Indian Railways. As of now the corporation has completed the deployment of 9,950 km of OFC within India. By the end of March 2003, it is aiming to provide 20,000 Km of OFC network.

"We are planning to lay OFC in four metros of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkota, and Chennai and then four mini metros- Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Pune and Bangalore within this financial year. Once the OFC network is in place RailTel will be in a position to give 155 MB of bandwidth to every railway station, making it possible for them to have their own public reservation system (PRS) center," he explained. This move by RailTel will not only cut expenses incurred on leasing bandwidth from BSNL, but will also improve proper functioning of the system as there would be less traffic.

(CNS)