Indian Railways is on the right track to bring cheap Internet to the masses. Engineers plan to use railway lines as a conduit for communication cables.
Electrified tracks contain communications and control cabling that usually has spare capacity.
Existing cables will be reused to send telecommunications, avoiding the cost and expense of laying a fresh cabling network.
Already, the New Delhi engineers are adding cybercafe kiosks to stations along the track.
A pilot project involving five stations and 40km of track between Vijayawada and Guntur in Southern India will be completed this month. If successful, the engineers say the system could link 4000 towns and 100,000 households within two years.