Indian Railways has decided to provide ‘Content on Demand Service (CoD)’ on trains and railway stations to generate more non-fare revenues. Railway Board had entrusted RailTel with providing the Content on Demand service to passengers in trains. Passengers will be able to enjoy uninterrupted free/subscription-based entertainment service and high-quality buffer-free streaming across personal devices during their train journey.
Highlights:
- This facility will be rolled out in over 8000 trains by railways
- Passengers in suburban trains will also have this facility
RailTel has selected Margo Network, a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment, as the Digital Entertainment Service Provider (DESP) for providing Content on Demand (CoD) Service on trains and railway stations. The project will be implemented in two years. The provision of content such as movies, shows, educational programs etc. will be made available both in paid and unpaid formats.
RailTel will provide various preloaded multilingual content (Movies, Music Videos, General Entertainment, Lifestyle etc) in moving trains through media servers installed in trains. It will also provide e-commerce/m-commerce services in various domains e.g. travel bookings (cab, bus, train) and provide various innovative solutions in the digital marketing domain.
The full rollout is expected to be completed by 2022. The content-on-demand service will not only improve overall passenger experience but at the same time will increase the non-fare revenue through multiple monetization models, A top RailTel official said.
The CoD service will not only improve overall passenger experience but also increase the non-fare revenue through multiple monetisation models.
The scope covers all 17 Zones of Indian Railways. The earning from the project will be majorly through three streams: advertisement based monetization, subscription-based monetization and e-commerce/partnership services.
This service will be available in 8,731 trains, including suburban trains. Also, CoD will be available at all Wi-Fi enabled railway stations, which has crossed 5,563 railway stations as on date.
