Movies, videos on demand in trains from 2022: Railways

NEW DELHI: Passengers are in for a treat from 2022 as they will be able to enjoy uninterrupted entertainment services like movies, shows, educational programmes, videos in trains both in paid and unpaid formats, railway PSU Railtel said on Tuesday.

The government telecom company has selected M/s Margo Network, a subsidiary of Zee Entertainment, as the Digital Entertainment Service Provider (DESP) for providing Content on Demand (COD) service in trains and stations.

"COD will be available in all premium/express/mail trains and suburban trains of the Indian Railways in the next two years, and the provision of content such as movies, shows, educational programmes will be made available both in paid and unpaid formats for a contract period of 10 years, which includes first two years of implementation," a statement from Railtel said.

In this project, Railtel will provide various pre-loaded multi-lingual contents (movies, music videos, general entertainment, lifestyle) in moving trains through media servers installed in trains.

COD will also provide e-commerce or m-commerce services in various domains like travel bookings (cab, bus, train) and provide various innovative solutions in digital marketing domain.

With COD, passengers will be able to enjoy uninterrupted free or subscription-based entertainment service during their train journey despite unstable mobile network.

Passengers will be able to enjoy high quality buffer-free streaming across personal devices. The content will be periodically refreshed and will have high-quality bufferfree streaming across personal devices, the statement said.

"The full roll-out will be completed within by 2022. The COD service will not only improve overall passenger experience but also increase the nonfare revenue through multiple monetisation models.

"The scope covers all 17 zones of the Indian Railways. The earning from the project will be majorly through three streams like advertising-based monetisation, subscriptionbased monetisation and e-commerce or partnership services," Puneet Chawla, Cmd/railtel, said.

A total of approximately 8,731 trains, which includes 3,003 trains (premium/mail/ express- to and fro) pan India and 2,864 pairs of suburban trains (total 5,728 trains) have been kept in the scope of the COD service roll-out.