After the Pandit Nehru Bus Station (PNBS), the city railway station is all set to offer Wi-Fi facility to passengers by the end of June.
With the move, Vijayawada railway Station will join the elite club of A-1 category stations in the country offering the facility.
Passengers can avail 4G (fourth generation) services, once the facility is commissioned for which arrangements are going on at a brisk pace, according to official sources.
So far, only seven stations in the country– Agra Cantonment, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, New Delhi, Secunderabad and Varanasi -- are providing Wi-Fi facility to passengers.
Vijayawada station will be the first in Andhra Pradesh to provide the facility free of cost up to the first 30 minutes and charge for the subsequent usage is being worked out. The service will be rendered by RailTel Corporation of India, which has almost completed the works on the Wi-Fi base station, a senior official of the Vijayawada Division told The Hindu .
The Ministry of Railways has planned to offer Wi-Fi facility at nearly 400 A-1 and A category stations having successfully implemented it at some most important stations as pilot projects.
It was also targeted to provide Wi-Fi on premium trains like Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duranto Expresses.
RailTel has the exclusive Right of Way along the country’s railway tracks for its optical fibre cable network, Railway officials say.
The Wi-Fi roll-out work at important stations has gained pace after a provision has been made for it in the Railway Budget. South Central Railway General Manager P.K. Srivastava, during his recent visit here, has said that making stations Wi-Fi enabled was a priority and it was high time that Vijayawada station was equipped with it.
Meanwhile, the Vijayawada Municipal Corporation (VMC) is in the advanced stages of providing Wi-Fi on the M.G Road as part of the Smart Cities programme . A survey has already been done and the OFC work is under way.
It is a pilot project that will be replicated in other prime areas in a phased manner, VMC Commissioner G. Veerapandian says. He said top officials of the service provider discussed the modalities two days ago.
