After the booming success of high-speed WiFi connections in railway stations across India; Google is now looking to expand its “Station Project” and take it to other public places.
The city of Pune, located about 150km southeast of Mumbai, will host the world’s first public place to deploy fast-internet hotspots. The project has been started through a collaboration of IT giant Larsen & Toubro (L&T), IBM, Google and the state-run internet service provider, ‘RailTel.’ These companies have joined to form a consortium of INR 1500 million ($22.2 million) with the Pune Smart City Development Corporation.
A Google spokesperson spoke to Mashable India,
“With the goal of creating a great Internet for the next billion users, we have found that making high-quality public Wi-Fi more easily accessible can play a critical role in bringing the benefits of Internet to millions of Indians. We believe that Google Station, can help ISPs, venue operators, and city governments quickly and reliably deploy high speed internet.
As the Economic Times first reported; this project is a part of the larger effort by Google to bring affordable and fast internet connectivity through businesses and individuals to spread better internet facilities across the country. The company has also decided to offer monetary benefits to its partners, as revealed by Caesar Sengupta, VP of Google’s Next Billion Plan, last year.
The Economic Times added that IBM would also help in making the smart city solutions, a reality. Moreover, L&T has created another partnership with the government and has plans for bringing Wi-Fi at 500 locations in Mumbai.
It looks like the Indian technology sector is ready for some serious upgrades!
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