Google's free Wi-Fi to reach 200 railway stations in India in 2017

Google is gearing up to bring millions of more Indians online next year.

Google and state-run internet service provider RailTel will push their free Wi-Fi internet to another 100 railway stations in India next year, said Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.

Google and RailTel partnered earlier this year and announced plans to bring free internet to 400 railway stations across India. The two announced last week that their Wi-Fi service has reached the 100th railway station in the country.

Prabhu said the plan is to "double" the number of railway stations that have free Wi-Fi by the end of next year. He added that more trains will also be getting internet access. “The objective is to have Wi-Fi facility in all railway stations in small cities and towns,” he added.

Some media reports today suggested that 200 more railway stations will be getting free Wi-Fi next year. A source at Google, however, clarified that it’s indeed 100 more stations that will be getting the free Wi-Fi next year.

Google’s initiative, which it has previously described as the "largest public Wi-Fi project in the world", is chugging along very smoothly in India.

The company said last week that over 5 million people in the country were latching on its free internet service every month, adding that it was seeing 15,000 new users access the internet for the first time in their lives every day.