Google Brings Wi-Fi to Mumbai’s Railway Station

Passengers at Mumbai’s railway station try out Google’s free Wi-Fi service on Jan. 22. Shefali Anand/The Wall Street Journal

The first Indian train station equipped with free — at least for now — Wi-Fi from Alphabet Inc.’s Google is now online.

As part of a new partnership with India’s government, the U.S. tech titan and local officials on Friday unveiled the service at Mumbai Central, one of the main stations in the country’s commercial capital.

Nineteen-year-old Irshad Shikalgar, who was catching a train home, said he downloaded a movie in 30 minutes, which he said was very fast. “This should be available everywhere,” he said.

The Wi-Fi effort, part of a plan to bring Internet access to 100 railway stations in India by the end of 2016 and hundreds more in the years ahead, was announced by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to the U.S. in September.

The service is entirely free for now, but that could change as the company looks for ways to make it pay for itself. “While there will always be some level of free Wi-Fi available, the long-term goal will be making this self-sustainable to allow for expansion tomore stations and places,” Google said in a blog post Friday.

Google spokesman Taj Meadows said there isn’t “an exact timeline for when the current free model might change, but it’s fair to say this is a longer term thing, not a matter of weeks.”

Google is keen for new users — many of whom are coming online for the first time on low-cost smartphones running its Android operating system.

About 1 billion people in India lack Web access, according to consultancy McKinsey & Co.

Several people trying the free Wi-Fi at Mumbai Central station on Friday said they don’t usually use Google.com, though some use YouTube to watch videos.

They said they typically use Wi-Fi for messaging services such as WhatsApp that also allow them to make phone calls. Some use social media platform Facebook.

Google executives said their main goal is to provide a taste of high-quality Internet to thousands of Indians.

“Everyone who comes here will get high quality, high-definition streaming,” said Gulzar Azad, head of access programs for Google in India. He said 100,000 people pass through Mumbai Central station daily.

At the station, users will be able to get high-speed Internet for the first hour. Then the speed slows to “normal,” Mr. Azad said.

The Wi-Fi is available on all the station’s platforms, but cuts off as soon as one steps outside the station.

Google executives didn’t say how much the project is going to cost the company, but said that it involves funding from RailTel Corp. of India, a state-run provider of telecom infrastructure.

The next four cities where train stations will get Google’s Wi-Fi service are Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, Jaipur in Rajasthan, Patna in Bihar and Ranchi in Jharkhand, according to Mr. Azad.

During a visit to New Delhi last month, Google’s India-born Chief Executive Sundar Pichai said parent company Alphabet is also moving forward with Project Loon, an ambitious effort to use high-altitude balloons to beam Web access to remote areas of the country. “We think it will make a lot of sense to reach rural areas in India,” Mr. Pichai said.

Facebook Inc., a Google rival for digital advertising dollars, also has a project aiming to bring users online in India and other emerging markets via a free app or mobile site. But some criticize the project, known as Free Basics, for offering a selection of websites for free rather than the full Internet. Facebook counters that some access to the Internet is better than none at all.

Mr. Modi, meanwhile, has embarked on plans to lay hundreds of thousands of miles of fiber-optic cable to as part of a program to get more rural Indians online