It’s 11 a.m. and Mumbai Central Station’s main hall is packed. Commuters bustle around; most of them focussed on announcements about national trains.
One small group of students, though, are busy with virtual travels. Under the white signboards suspended from the high ceilings, advertising free high-speed WiFi provided by Google and RailTel free for all passengers in the station, they are huddled around a Samsung tablet plugged into a public charging station.
“We are trying to see if the connection is fast enough to download a movie,” says Anand Shastri, 19. “The WiFi here is supposed to be faster than what we get at home so we are trying to make the most of it!”
Over on the commuter train side, Preethi Patil is waiting for her usual train to Dadar, where she will switch over to the Central Railway to get to work at Ghatkopar.
“The WiFi is definitely faster than my regular mobile internet,” she says. Generally, she says, she uses the time while waiting to look through Twitter and Facebook and maybe also watch a YouTube video or three. “Nowadays,” she says with a smile, “I don’t mind waiting a little longer and letting two or three trains go by.”
It’s been two weeks since Mumbai Central became the first station in India to be connected to a high-speed fibre optics network. And for the 1,00,000 passengers who pass through the station every day, it’s certainly made the wait for trains a more pleasant experience.
Commuters happy
Most commuters that The Hindu spoke to were impressed with the speed of the connection. It can, at times be erratic, especially at peak rush hour, but the rest of the time the speed is good enough to stream high definition video.
While walking from the central hall to the local train station, we abruptly lost connection until we came down the stairs. Then, just as we sat down under another signboard advertising the service, the connection resumed. In general, we found the speed fastest in the central hall with variations at separate platforms. We tried YouTube and Netflix; while the stream sometimes stopped midway and threw up error messages, a simple reloading of the page was enough to fix the issue.
Google has claimed that the Internet service provided at the station is superior to anything offered by other internet providers. The top speed claimed is 1 GB per second but this is, of course, not uniform. “I used a speed-testing app, and found that at about noon, the speed clocked in at about 9 MB per second,” says Sandeep Wagle, a businessman. That’s still faster than the speed provided by most data packs and is comparable to a high-end broadband connection.
Connecting to the WiFi is actually very simple and doesn’t require the filling in of too many details.
When you open the WiFi options on your Internet device, RailWire should show up among the network options available; when you connect to it, you will be asked to fill in your cellphone number. Once you do that, you get an OTP (One Time Password). Once you fill that in, your connection is available for the next 24 hours. It’s unclear how (or if) Google plans to eventually price the service. Currently, it is high-speed for the first hour of use after which, rather than pay for a top-up, you get a slightly lower speed. For now, while the service remains free, it’s off to a great start.
