The Minister of Railways Shri Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu while presenting Railway Budget 2016-17 in Parliament today said that the process has begun to introduce Wi-Fi services at stations especially for youth and business travellers. He proposed to commission Wi-Fi services at 100 stations this year and at 400 more stations in the next 2 years. He said that Indian Railways is partnering with Google in this endeavour.

This year, an application of Track Management System (TMS) was launched. With this, activities of track inspection, monitoring and maintenance have thus been switched over to an IT platform, and automatic alerts in the form of SMS and e-mails are being generated. Inventory Management module of TMS has resulted in inventory reduction by 27,000 MT resulting in saving of ₹ 64 crore and scrap identification of 22,000 MT equivalent to ₹ 53 crore. During 2016-17, this system will be implemented on entire Indian Railways. Indian Railways has developed an application for maintaining centralized land data, and records of all land holdings over Indian Railways have been digitized.

Facilities such as ticketing, grievance redressal, etc. will be integrated into two mobile apps; one dealing with all ticketing issues and the other for receipt and redressal of complaints and suggestions related to all our services.

Public infrastructure digitalisation expands Wi Fi deployment and IT-based track management, with centralized land records and mobile service apps. Phased deployment of station Wi Fi in partnership with a private technology provider is being initiated, alongside network wide rollout of a Track Management System that migrates inspection, monitoring and maintenance to an IT platform with automated alerts. Inventory Management reductions and scrap identification have been produced, centralized land data has been digitized, and ticketing plus grievance redressal functions will be integrated into two mobile applications.