PANISAGAR

RailTel, a "Mini Ratna (Category-I)" Central Public Sector Enterprise under Ministry of Railways, is o­ne of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fibre network covering several towns & cities and rural areas of the country. RailTel is working towards creating a knowledge society at various fronts and has been selected for implementation of various mission-mode projects for the Government of India in the telecom field.

RailTel, o­n 9^th May, 2022, launched Prime Minister Wi-Fi Access Network Interface (PM-WANI) scheme based access of its Public Wi-Fi services across 100 Railway Stations having 2384 Wi-Fi hotspots. These stations are spread in 22 states and include 71 Category A1, A stations and 29 stations of other category.

Out of the 100 Railway Stations across India, 10 Railway stations are within the jurisdiction of N.F. Railway. These Railway stations are named as Siliguri, New Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Ghoom, Goalpara Town, Kamakhya, Guwahati, Agartala, Dharmanagar & Panisagar. To access this Wi-Fi network, presently android based Mobile App named ‘Wi-DOT’can be used which is available o­n Google Play Store.

RailTel’s Wi-Fi network, spread across 6102 Railway Stations across India, has 17,792 Wi-Fi hotspots, and is still growing. PM-WANI based access of RailTel’s public Wi-Fi services would be extended to all 6102 Railway Stations (where Wi-Fi facility is already available) in phased manner by the end of June 2022 (total 1000 Stations by 10^th June, 3000 Stations by 20^th June and all 6102 by 30th June’22).

         Wi-Fi hotspot plays a key role in last mile connectivity for delivering of broadband internet access to users. PM-WANI is an ambitious program of Department of Telecom, Government of India to facilitate ease of use and proliferate broadband usage for masses. C-DOT has designed and developed the framework of PM-WANI and N. F. Railway, as a zone to Indian Railways will be highly benefited to this PM-WANI scheme in the near future.