Google launched its Station initiative in India in 2015 to bring fast, free public Wi-Fi to over 400 of the busiest railway stations in the country by mid-2020

Tech giant Google on Monday said it has decided to wind down its Station programme globally through 2020, including in India, given that going online has become much easier and cheaper over the last five years. The US-based company said it is working with its partners to transition existing sites so they can remain useful resources for the community.

Google had launched Station in India in 2015 in partnership with Indian Railways and Railtel to bring fast, free public Wi-Fi to over 400 railway stations in the country by mid-2020.

“But we crossed that number by June 2018 and implemented Station in thousands of other locations around the country in partnership with telecommunications companies, ISPs and local authorities.

Over time, partners in other countries asked for Station too and we responded accordingly,” Google vice president (payments and next billion users) Caesar Sengupta said in a blog post.

He added that since then, getting online has become much simpler and cheaper and that mobile data plans have become more affordable and mobile connectivity is improving globally.

Apart from India, Station is available in Nigeria, Thailand, Philippines, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa.

“In addition to this changed context, the challenge of varying technical requirements and infrastructure among our partners across countries has also made it difficult for Station to scale and be sustainable, especially for our partners. And when we evaluate where we can truly make an impact in the future, we see the greater need and bigger opportunities in building products and features tailored to work better for the next billion-user markets,” it added.

Sengupta cited the example of India, where mobile data per GB is among the cheapest in the world. He cited reports that state mobile data prices have reduced by 95 per cent in the last 5 years and Indian users consume close to 10 GB of data each month, on an average.

According to data shared by Google in 2018, Google Station had close to 8 million monthly active users across 400 stations. The data showed the consumption was much higher in tier 2 cities while average data consumption stood at 350MB.