When you give people access to abundant, free Wi-Fi access they have a world of knowledge, expertise and opinion open to them - but they will probably just use it to watch porn.
The Economic Times reports on the data usage at India's Patna railway station and procured some information from a RailTel official, the Internet service provider for this station and many others around the nation.
That unnamed source states: "More than any other railway station in the country, where free Wi-Fi service was launched, the Patna railway station is on the top in the country for using internet search, particularly (search) for porn sites."
For those who may have missed the news, Google has worked in tandem with RailTel to launch free Wi-Fi access at many of the country's railway stations.
Google Station, as we reported back in September, is Google's campaign to offer the tools to local officials that will help garner an infrastructure for more abundant Internet access. The initiative has launched in India at its railway stations and will hopefully move to other parts of the world.
As The Economic Times reports, though, these information watering holes may just be an opportunity for salacious streaming.
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Unfortunately, we only have this one admission about Patna and confirmation of where data is being gobbled up elsewhere in the country: "After Patna, Jaipur railway station is second to use internet search, followed by Bengaluru and New Delhi."
In an odd twist, there has since been some push back on the initial report from RailTel itself.
Tech 2 quotes a RailTel spokesperson who states: "The Wi-Fi provided at stations is the platform to millions of users to connect to Internet. RailTel, being an Internet Service Provider, does not keep watch over the web sites being browsed by the users. The guidelines being issued by DoT in this regard from time to time are strictly complied with by RailTel."
So, to catch you up, one RailTel official states that porn is the greatest draw at Patna while another states that there is no way to verify such a thing, because the ISP doesn't monitor such things.
In somewhat similar news, New York City had to dial back its access at free Wi-Fi kiosks because, you guessed it, people were watching porn and generally being awful public citizens.
Perhaps people across India are not watching porn at these free Wi-Fi locations, but from what we know anecdotally out of New York and from the initial quotes out of RailTel, we doubt it.
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