Does porn rule Google's free Wi-Fi at Indian railway stations? No one knows

Google may have hoped that its free Wi-Fi at railway stations in India will help more people come online but it seems that many users are not putting the free internet access to good use.

A report from IANS news agency went viral in India today, which claimed that majority of search results at one of the biggest railway stations where Google and state-owned RailTel are operating free Wi-Fi networks were made for porn.

"More than anything, porn sites have been watched and downloaded by the people at Patna railway station," the report quoted an unidentified railway official at Patna railway station, the capital of Bihar state in east India,

The report also claimed that the service provider also maintained a record of internet usage by users on the free Wi-Fi network. RailTel has refuted these claims.

"RailTel doesn't track what websites people are visiting. The 'findings' in the report are hence baseless," a spokesperson for RailTel told Mashable India. "We do not comment on speculation," a Google spokesperson told us.

RailTel offers internet facilities tapping the optic fibre cable that runs alongside railway tracks that cover almost 70 percent of the country. Google has installed free Wi-Fi in over 50 railway stations in India in collaboration with RailTel. It plans to connect 100 railway stations with the free Wi-Fi by the end of this year and has plans to cover 400 stations in all.

At its Google for India event last month, Google said that over 3.5 million people are using the free Wi-Fi at railway stations, with 15,000 users new users coming online every day. As of June, when about 1.5 million people were on the network, Google said that the average consumption per user was 15 times the data they would consume on a 3G data plan in a day.

Using publicly available free Wi-Fi to watch pornography isn't unheard of, though. Last month, LinkNYC network said that it was shutting off web browsing on built-in tablets in over 400 of kiosks in New York City after it found that many people were using it to watch porn. Many libraries and offices implement filters to block porn.

India is a home to one of the largest internet markets, with over 300 million people in the country accessing the internet. The number is expected to grow to 730 million by 2020 by estimates. Unfortunately, the impressive growth rate is crippled by the fact that most internet users in India are males with nearly 100 percent dominance in rural areas.