India The program was first announced in September 2015, when
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Google's headquarters in
Mountain View, California. Google CEO
Sundar Pichai further detailed the plan in a blog post on the Official Google Blog, noting that it would be the "largest public Wi-Fi project in India, and among the largest in the world, by number of potential users". In January 2016, Google launched the program at the
Mumbai Central railway station in
India in partnership with
Indian Railways and
RailTel. RailTel, a
state-owned enterprise, provides Internet services as RailWire via its extensive
fiber network alongside many of these railway lines. In September 2016, the project was christened "Google Station". In December 2016, Google announced that it had rolled out Google Station at the 100th railway station in India. In January 2018,
NDTV reported that Google had started testing a paid model of Google Station, which is slated to reach as many as 400 railway stations in 2018. Later that month, Google announced that for the first time the Google Station projected had expanded beyond railway stations by launching 150 hotspots in
Pune. It worked with
Larsen & Toubro, India's largest engineering and construction company, and the project is a part of
Smart City Pune, a part of India's
Smart Cities Mission. In June 2018, Google announced that it had deployed WiFi at 400 railway stations across India with
Dibrugarh railway station being the 400th station. The company also stated that the service was being used by around 8 million users per month and the average data session on Google Station consumed 350 MB of data.
Launch outside India Google announced that it was bringing Google Station to
Indonesia in partnership with FiberStar and CBN, two Indonesian telecommunications companies that plan on rolling out Wi-Fi hotspots at hundreds of venues across the islands of
Java and
Bali in 2018. In March 2018 it announced expansion into Mexico, in partnership with the existing SitWifi network. In July 2018, at the "Google for Nigeria" event, Google station was launched in Lagos with the promise of expanding to 200 locations in 5 cities in the country by 2019. In February 2019, Google Station was launched in the Philippines, in partnership with
Smart. In June 2019, Google Station was made available in the city of
São Paulo,
Brazil, with expansion to other Brazilian cities planned. The program in Brazil involves America Net and
Linktel as partners, and
Itaú as a sponsor. In November 2019, Google Station was launched in 125 locations around
Cape Town,
South Africa in partnership with Think Wi-Fi.
Closure In February 2020, Google announced the service would be discontinued, saying that it was "no longer necessary," and "it had become difficult for Google to find a sustainable business model to scale the program." The service went offline on September 30, 2020. In India, RailTel took over the service and continues to offer free Wi-Fi without Google branding. == See also ==