Bangalore division of Indian Railways has partnered with RailTel and Telibrahma to provide “BluFi” services in the city railway station. BluFi stands for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity. The BluFi services will allow passengers to access online content such as videos, games, wallpapers along with Railway-related information information such as PNR status, just by switching Bluetooth on their mobile devices at the station.

Railway had also proposed Wi-Fi facility at ‘A1’ & ‘A’ category stations and in 50 rakes of important trains in Rajdhani/Shatabdi/Duranto category. This is in addition to Wi-Fi facility provided in 3 rakes of Howrah-New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani Express as a pilot project.

Free Wi-Fi services are provided RailTel as a part of its RailWire retail broadband drive. To use Railways’ free Wi-Fi service, passengers/users need to send a request for accessing Internet via their mobile phones. Users/passengers will then receive password via SMS for further proceedings.

Indian Railways has launched its next-generation e-ticketing system that features an enhanced booking capacity of 7,200 tickets per minute, and is said to be both faster and easier to use.

The new system developed by Centre for Railway information Systems (CRIS) with an estimated cost of Rs 180 crore would allow booking of 7,200 tickets per minute against 2,000 tickets per minute possible with the old system. Also, with the launch of the system, 120,000 concurrent users can book e-tickets simultaneously now, against the earlier capacity of 40,000 concurrent users at a time.

Railway Minister Sadanand Gowda said -

“It was a rail budget commitment which was fulfilled.The next generation e-ticketing software will do away with the problems of non-availability of website like user sessions getting terminated.”

Gowda suggested education to children of railway staff through optic fibre cable network. He also announced Rs 5 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh as cash awards for CRIS and IRCTC respectively for their commendable work.

Railway minister said -

“Railways is part and parcel of development. It is in the mind of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM said all operational part of railways should be covered through online system. I have envisaged hospital management information system for the railway staff.”