VSNL, Sify to run cybercafes at 82 rly stations

Kolkata, March 28: VSNL and Sify will run the RailTel express cybercafes to be set up at 82 railway stations in the current year.

RailTel Corp of India Ltd, the Rs 34-crore nationwide broadband telecom and multimedia network under the ministry of railways, has decided to set up cybercafes at various railway stations in the country. It plans to open cafes at another 270 stations next year.

All these cafes will be run on a franchisee model on the basis of revenue sharing, according to JP Singh, general manager of RailTel Corp.

VSNL will run cybercafes at a majority of the 82 stations, followed by Sify. For example, VSNL has bagged all the 17 stations in the eastern region.

For setting up cafes at stations, RailTel has divided the stations into A and B category according to passenger and railway traffic, and importance of the station. Within each category, there is further division to facilitate better sharing of revenue between the service providers, like VSNL, Sify and RailTel.

“Though Tatanagar and Howrah stations are in the A category, the revenue potential of Howrah is much more than Tatanagar. So there should be different revenue sharing models for the two stations,” said Mr Singh.

Besides revenue sharing, both VSNL and Sify have to pay for bandwidth. On the other hand, RailTel will pay rent and electricity charges to Indian Railways as part of the revenue. RailTel, which has a total asset base of Rs 800 crore, has plans of investing around Rs 110 crore in the current financial year.

Besides setting up cybercafes in the stations, the company plan includes getting NLD licences and setting up a franchisee network for providing broadband Internet and IPVPN services.

In the eastern region, RailTail has signed an agreement with Kolkata-based Descon Ltd to provide a host of services from Internet bandwidth, VPN to voice over Internet protocol.