The Wi-Fi in these stations comes from a journey that Indian Railways, RailTel and us embarked on two and a half years ago. In 2015, our CEO Sundar Pichai and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a project to provide high speed public Wi-Fi in 400 train stations across India. The first Wi-Fi enabled railway station, Mumbai Central, went live on January 2016. We later rolled out a global public Wi-Fi program called Google Station based on the model that we developed in India.
Our journey in India has shown us the tremendous potential of public Wi-Fi programs in creating
opportunities, and we believe that the benefits of getting people online can and must be replicated beyond borders. We’ve launched Google Station in Indonesia and Mexico, and will take it to even more countries soon. As we take Google Station global, today, we’re proud to announce that Dibrugarh railway station in Assam state, northeast India is the 400th train station in India to be powered by public Wi-Fi.
There are now over 8 million people getting online with Google Station every month. On average, people consume 350MB of data per session, roughly the size of a half hour television episode and over half of the people using Google Station engage in multiple online sessions a day. Some are watching videos, some are chatting with friends, but like Shrinath and Helen, they are actively seeking that Wi-Fi connection to get things done during their day.
Although we have hit the target of 400 train stations, our journey remains unfinished. India has the second largest population of internet users in the world, but there are still almost a billion Indians who aren’t online. There are millions of other life-changing journeys that still haven’t been taken. We realize that not everyone in India lives or works near a train station, so we’re moving beyond train stations and into the rest of the cities. Google Station is now also available in 150 locations in Pune, Maharashtra, and more Smart Cities are coming soon.
