Telecom and IT benefit from Indian railway budget 2013-14

Telecom Lead India: Indian railway budget 2013-14 — announced by Pawan Kumar Bansal — is set to generate major business for telecom and IT sectors.

The following are the highlights of the Railway Budget that benefit both IT and telecom:

– Free Wi-Fi to be provided on some trains
– Rs 100 crore for improving stations in New Delhi
– E-ticketing through mobile phones
– SMS alerts for passengers on reservation status
– Next generation e-ticketing system by end of 2013
– Annual plan for 2013-14 set at Rs 63,363 crore
– Train Protection Warning System on Automatic Signalling Systems

 

Though Indian Railway will make a loss of Rs 24,600 crore in 2012-13 against Rs 22,500 crore in 2011-12, Railway minister is gearing up to invest in IT and telecom.

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During his budget speech on Tuesday, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Railway minister, said: I will be extending availability of the facility of internet ticketing from 0030 hours to 2330 hours. We will make e-ticketing possible through mobile phones. Also, as a follow up to overwhelming response to IR website and Integrated Train Enquiry Service under “139”, a project of SMS Alerts to passengers providing updates on reservation status is being rolled out shortly.”

The minister also promised to cover larger number of trains under Real Time Information System (RTIS), whereby rail-users will be able to access information through nominated websites and mobile phones.

“I often get to hear that congestion at the IRCTC website causes inordinate delay in accessing the system for e-ticketing. By the end of this calendar year, we will put in place a Next Generation e-ticketing system which will bring about a paradigm shift in internet rail ticketing by significantly improving the end user experience in respect of ease of use, response time as well as capacity. The system shall be able to support 7200 tickets per minute as against 2000 tickets per minute today. It will support 1,20,000 simultaneous users at any point in time against the present capacity of 40,000 users with capability to easily scale up as
demand increases in future. The system will make use of advanced fraud control and security management tools thereby further improving fairness and transparency in disbursal of tickets,” he added.

Indian Railway will also launch Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) on automatic signalling systems. In addition, following successful completion of initial testing, the indigenously developed Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) is proposed to be put to rigorous trials to validate the technology under complex operational conditions.

Anand B
[email protected]