Railways to start Content on Demand service in trains from this month, to offer movies, news, music

You will soon be able to enjoy your favourite content during your train journey as the Ministry of Railways has given permission to start the Content on Demand (COD) service from this month.

Under this service, railways will offer movies, news, music videos etc. in various languages, during which the passengers will be able to enjoy the journey.

Puneet Chawla, CMD of RailTel,  a “Miniratna” enterprise of Government of India focusing on providing broadband and VPN services, said that to ensure a buffer-free service, the media server will be installed inside the train coach. This will keep the content updated from time to time and passengers will be able to enjoy buffer-free streaming. This service will be started at 8,731 trains including 5,723 local trains and more than 5,952 stations equipped with Wi-Fi.

Chawla said that the work of a pilot project in Western Railways on a Rajdhani train and an AC local train is nearing completion. It is being tested which is in the last phase. In this, the revenue share of Railways and RailTel will be 50:50. The PSU expects annual revenue of at least Rs 60 crore from this project.

Last week, in order to decongest ticket booking counters and to ensure smooth compliance with social distancing norms, the facility to book unreserved tickets through UTS ON MOBILE app is being reactivated by Indian Railways.

Indian Railways has decided to reactivate the facility of UTS ON MOBILE App in zones where unreserved train services are reintroduced.

It has been decided that in addition to UTS ON MOBILE App facility available on suburban sections, this facility may also be reintroduced on non-suburban sections of zonal Railways. Zonal Railways have been instructed that whenever unreserved train services are introduced on any zonal Railway, the zonal Railway concerned may accordingly enable UTS ON MOBILE App for issuing unreserved tickets.