Google Wi-Fi, which was free at 400 railway stations, in India will no longer be available. As per reports, the company is shutting down the Wi-Fi services that it currently offers across India. But this is not specific to India, as Google is actually doing this globally, across countries such as Brazil, South Africa, Nigeria, Thailand, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and the Philippines.

According to a statement by the company, the internet has become a lot cheaper now, and India specifically has one of the lowest mobile data per GB price in the world. As per the statement, mobile data prices have reduced by 95 percent in the last five years. Moreover, the company is facing difficulty to make it a sustainable business. In India, Google was working with RailTel, Indian Railways, and other domestic organizations to provide free Wi-Fi in the railway stations in India. It was also mentioned in the statement that on average, Indians use 10 GB of internet every month.

The programme was first launched by Google in India back in 2015, to let travelers enjoy free internet in India’s busiest railway stations. 400 such railway stations enjoyed the free service for the last five years, which was installed and maintained by Google. The project has been running in a few locations including Pune and Bengaluru in collaboration with BSNL.

The services in Mexico, South Africa, and Brazil came after India, and all of those places are also set to lose this facility. But we can safely say that nowadays most of us have the internet on our phones. However, there is a large number of marginalized people, who could’ve used free Wi-Fi at railway stations as well as in their daily lives.