RailTel Corporation a "Mini Ratna (Category-I)" PSU is one of the largest neutral telecom infrastructure providers in the country owning a Pan-India optic fiber network on exclusive Right of Way (ROW) along Railway track. The OFC network covers all important towns & cities of the country and several rural areas covering 70% of India's population. RailTel with strong nationwide presence is committed to bring cutting edge technology and offer innovative services to the Indian Telecom market.
Since communication is key to transportation, Indian Railways (IR) was earlier solely dependent on Department of Telecom (now BSNL) for their Control & Administrative Communication circuits. To increase circuit efficiency, Railways started building up their own communication systems from early 70's based on overhead telephone lines, quad cabels and MW.
Railway Reforms Committee decided to introduce OFC based communications in IR for reasons of Safety, Reliability, Availability & Serviceability through using a dedicated network. This decision was taken to create network independent of DoT (BSNL) & replace existing MW telecom systems (60% of which have achieved end of life) with OFC.
Indian Railways commissioned first OFC on Churchgate - Virar section (in Mumbai) for Train operation & control purpose which comprised of 60 KM of network across 28 stations.
DoT issued 1st National Telecom policy (NTP) which introduced Mobile Licenses to private operators in India under the license system.
2nd NTP was introduced which opened the NLD segment under favorable license in conditions with revenue share to assist Telcos spread network across India including in rural areas.
Announcement was made for formation of a telecom corporation to build a Nation-wide Broadband Multimedia Telecom Network. RailTel formed as a PSU fully owned by Railways in Sept, 2000 with authorized capital of Rs. 1000 crore with a mandate to modernize Railways Communication network and to significantly contribute to the realization of goals and objectives of the National Telecom Policy 1999.
It was also decided that Railway's existing telecom OFC assets ( approx 4500 RKM) shall be transferred to RailTel for commercial exploitation. RailTel initiated roll out of OFC across the country along Railway routes from 2001 and created over 25000 RKM of OFC network equipped with SDH based systems by March 2006.
Our Vision is to become the preferred telecom solutions and services provider for knowledge economy.
To attain leadership in providing premier telecom infrastructure service by offering the cost-effective state of the art communication solutions.
To facilitate Railways in expeditious modernizing of their operation and safety systems and network providing by state of art communication infrastructure.
To plan, build, develop, operate and maintain a nationwide broadband telecom and multimedia network to supplement national telecom infrastructure to spur growth of telecom, broadband and IT enabled value added services in all parts of country specially rural,remote and backward areas.
To generate revenue through commercial exploitation of its telecom network.