modi sundar

Google has announced additional details about its plan to provide public, high-speed Wi-Fi services at 400 train stations across India in order to help get millions of people online.

The announcement was made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the occasion of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the company’s US headquarters ‘Googleplex’.

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Pichai said that the plan is in line with Modi’s ‘Digital India’ initiative.

Google will collaborate with the Indian Railways and RailTel, which provides internet services through its fibre network along the railway lines.

Google’s access and energy team will work with these partners to bring the first stations online in the coming months.

"We’d like to help get these next billion Indians online-so they can access the entire web, and all of its information and opportunity."

Before the end of 2016, the project will cover 100 of the busiest stations in India and the remaining stations soon after.

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Pichai said: "In the past year, 100 million people in India started using the internet for the first time.

"This means there are now more internet users in India than in every country in the world aside from China.

"But what’s really astounding is the fact that there are still nearly one billion people in India who aren’t online.

"We’d like to help get these next billion Indians online, so they can access the entire web, and all of its information and opportunity. And not just with any old connection, with fast broadband so they can experience the best of the web."

Google has also released a map of the first 100 railway stations that will get high-speed Wi-Fi in India by the end of 2016.

The start of Wi-Fi at the initial 100 stations will provide services to more than ten million people who pass through them every day.

"This will rank it as the largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users," Pichai added.

Image: Sundar Pichai and Narendra Modi at the Googleplex. Photo: courtesy of Google.