(THE NEWSMAN OF INDIA.COM)
In a unique public friendly initiative, RailTel, a PSU of Ministry of Railways has operationalized a scheme of setting up of Common Service Centre (CSC) Kiosks (stalls) at Railway Stations across India. The move will help the public visiting railway stations to take advantage of various services offered by CSC at station itself. The services offered by CSC include booking of the travelling tickets (train, air, bus etc.), Aadhar Card, Voter Card, Mobile recharge, Electricity bill payment, Pan card, Income tax, Banking, insurance and many more.

This scheme has been operationalized in partnership with ‘CSC e-Governance Services India Limited’ (CSC- SPV), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Govt of India. These kiosks will be run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs).

These kiosks have been named as ‘RailWire Saathi Kiosks’ as RailWire is the brand name of the retail broadband service of RailTel. To begin with, the RailWire Saathi CSC kiosks at Varanasi City Railway station and Prayagraj City Railway station in Uttar Pradesh have been made operational on pilot basis. Similar kiosks will be operationalized at around 200 railway stations, mostly in rural areas, in phases. Out of these, 44 are in South Central Railway, 20 are in North Frontier Railway, 13 are in East Central Railway, 15 are in Western Railway, 25 are in Northern Railway, 12 are in West Central Railway, 13 are in East Coast Railway and 56 are in North Eastern Railway.

RailTel has created one of the largest integrated Wi-Fi Networks of the world by providing Public Wi-Fi (under the brand name ‘RailWire’) at 6090 stations out of which 5000 are in rural areas. Utilizing this existing infrastructure at stations, RailTel, in partnership with CSC, plans to deliver broadband services to rural areas which will go a long way in bridging the digital divide and fulfil the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s vision of Digital India.

Talking about this initiative, Puneet Chawla, CMD/RailTel, said, ‘People in rural areas often find it difficult to avail various e-governance service or take advantage of digitalization due to lack of infrastructure/resources as well as lack of knowledge using internet. These RailWire Saathi kiosks will bring these essential digital services at rural railway stations to support rural population.”

Talking about the partnership with RailTel, Dr. Dinesh Kumar Tyagi, MD, CSC SPV said, “Due to erratic connectivity, citizens in remote villages at times face challenges in accessing various services seamlessly. With CSC services made available through RailTel’s Wi-Fi and kiosk infrastructure at Railway stations, we will be able to reach out to large number of people visiting these stations or living in its vicinity.”

‘RailWire’ (RailTel’s retail broadband service) is FTTH (Fibre to the Home) based broadband services (B2C) based on collaborative business model and 40% of its last mile service partners are in rural areas. There are more than 2.7 lakh CSCs across country, mainly in village areas. Now additional CSCs are coming up in Railway stations. RailTel plans to leverage complementing strength of CSC to broaden its broadband users.