In hopes of boosting its role in the Indian market, Google is offering free high-speed internet access for railway stations in India, starting with Mumbai Central station, the first of 400 stations the company plans to eventually reach with the service says Canadian Business.
For the project, Google’s Access & Energy Team has teamed up with Indian Railways as well as state-owned communications infrastructure provider RailTel, which has built a network of 26, 000 miles of fiber-optic lines along most major rail tracks across the country that Google will be using to support Wireless Access Points at train stations, reports Tech Crunch. RailTel plans on growing that network to cover 33,000 miles of track. 
With more than 23 million people riding Indian railways every day, Google said free Internet in train stations will give high-speed access that many can’t afford. It also hopes to diversify India’s user base, given that less than a third of Internet users in India are women, and has been upgrading its services in Hindi and other languages spoken across India.
“Most of India is still not online,” Google CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in New Delhi. “We want to bring access to as many people as possible,” he said.
