RailTel Corporation of India has announced that it has achieved the milestone of 100,000 fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) broadband internet users in Tamil Nadu. This service by RailTel under the brandname “Railwire’ is reliable, affordable and secure.
The highlight of this achievement is that over 50 per cent of the users are from rural areas which include many far flung remote villages where only Railwire broadband internet service is available.
Commenting on the development, Puneet Chawla, chairman and managing director (CMD), RailTel, said, “RailTel is committed to leverage its infrastructure to spur wired broadband and entrepreneurship in rural India. Rural broadband deployment is one way of bridging the digital divide between rural and urban populations. The broadband connectivity in villages will be key enabler for the socio-economic development in rural areas.”
The partners at the interaction programme showed enthusiasm and requested Railtel for providing more value added services to serve their customers better.
Introduction of broadband internet facility in rural areas is helping in accelerating digital progress, technological advancement and improving quality of life of the people living in these areas. The benefits of the broadband connectivity to the rural population are immense with the convergence of voice, data and video. The availability of a robust and reliable broadband connectivity is most critical for the successful implementation of some of the key social sector schemes and programmes in rural areas by the Central and State governments on e-governance, education, health, employment and financial inclusion.
RailTel is playing a major role in this digital transformation. Currently, RailTel has more than 460,000 Railwire subscribers in the country out of which around 50 per cent are in rural areas across the country.
Internet in villages is also helping in setting up Common Service Centres (CSCs) through Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) which will make available services like 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.
RailTel is using a model of collaborating with local entrepreneurs and creating sustainable livelihoods. Also, Railtel has played a pioneering role in developing this kind of collaborative model.
