With China's President Xi Jinping adamant about his government's stringent requirements for American tech companies looking to do business in the country, it is no surprise that Silicon Valley's hottest players are turning their eyes toward a more viable market: India.
Google has announced that it is planning to install free high-speed Wi-Fi to 100 train stations in India by the end of 2016, with the rollout expected to reach 400 other stations in India's 67,000-mile network of railway tracks soon afterwards. The first 100 stations will provide free Wi-Fi for the 10 million passengers who ride the trains every day, Google says.
The American search company is teaming up with Indian Railways, which operates India's 7,000-station railway network, and RailTel, which manages its own fiber network along parts of the railway network.
While the project will offer free Wi-Fi at first, Google hopes it will become self-sustainable to allow the expansion to other train stations and places in India.
The announcement was made during Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Google's Palo Alto headquarters. Modi is making the rounds at the world's biggest tech headquarters in his effort to push his Digital India pet program and bring the Internet to the country.
"We are expanding our public Wi-Fi hotspots," Modi says. "For example, we want to ensure that free Wi-Fi is not only there in airport lounges, but also on our railway platforms. Teaming up with Google, we will cover 500 railway stations in a short time."
Although the number of Indian Internet users saw a 100 million spike in 2014, there are still one billion people who have no access to the Internet. And while millions of Indians have their own data plan, the wireless service is often slow and intermittent.
Google hopes to ease this problem by bringing high-speed broadband access to the country. As CEO Sundar Pichai notes in a blog post, the service will allow users to stream high-definition videos, research their destination, and download videos, games or books.
Pichai, himself a native of Chennai (formerly Madras), India, explains why the initiative is close to his heart.
"When I was a student, I relished the day-long railway journey I would make from Chennai Central station (then known as Madras Central), to IIT Kharagpur," he says. "I vividly remember the frenetic energy at the various stations along the way and marveled at the incredible scale and scope of Indian Railways."
"We think this is an important part of making the Internet both accessible and useful for the more than 300 million Indians already online, and the nearly one billion more who are not," Pichai adds.
The initiative, of course, is not completely altruistic. Bringing more people online will help Google expand its revenue, since more people using the Internet means more people seeing Google's ads.
