Google to provide wi-fi at 500 Indian railway stations

San Jose, Sep 27: Google will collaborate with Indian Railways to provide wi-fi services at 500 stations by next year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced today as he visited the headquarters of the search engine giant here.

Modi, who took a tour of the Google campus seeing the latest products and forward-looking researches, was given a presentation of Google Earth in which the ghats of his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi were shown.

He appreciated and encouraged Google to develop Apps which could benefit the common man as he participated in Hackathon under which its employees sat for 15 hours straight to devise such Apps for use in India.

Making brief remarks to the Google employees, most of whom are Indians, Modi announced that "Indian Railways and Google will collaborate to provide wi-fi at 500 railway stations in India." Earlier, India-born Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the seach engine giant will provide high speed internet services at 100 railway stations in India initially and then expand it by 400 more by next year.

Recalling his young days when he used to travel by train from Chennai to Kharagpur, Pichai noted that 25 million people daily ride the Indian Railways which has 7500 stations. He also pointed out that the lenght of Indian Railways is twice the distance between Earth and Moon. Modi pointed out that the network of Indian Railways is equivalent to a country in Europe.

PTI