Wi-Fi for Howrah Rajdhani

The Indian Railways is planning to make the New Delhi-Howrah Rajdhani Express the first Wi-Fi-enabled train in the country by December-end.

The Wi-Fi facility, available at the international airports in the country, enables laptop users to access the Net without plugging into a regular connection, or having to use a data card.

Both business travelers and commuters will be interested in using wireless services on trains as it will enable them to productively use the nearly 24 hour travel and be in touch with the global community and share their experiences in real time.

They said the facility would be initially available in three rakes of the train and extended to other trains depending on the success of the project.

The estimated cost of the project is Rs 6.30 crore, and the railways have awarded the contract for the equipment and their installation. Browsing of the Net would be through a satellite-based system using Wi-Fi for the distribution of Internet bandwidth.

The satellite link-up cost is more than Rs 1.75 crore and the equipment to facilitate Internet access will cost around Rs 4.5 crore, as per a senior railway ministry official.

RailTel Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian Railways, had conducted successful trials in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Shatabdi Express in January.

RailTel conducted the technical trial with vendors, including the UK’sNomad Digital and Belgium’s 21Net, who have deployed satellite-based Internet for VIARail (Canada), Thalys (EU) and NTV (Italy).

“The trials have proved that passengers will experience seamless connectivity on running trains. Considering the revenue it will yield, the project is being given top priority,” officials said.

The railways plan to equip other Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains with Wi-Fi facility in the future.

Passengers will have to make a requisition to the travelling ticket examiner to access the Internet. The examiner will send the requisition to the central hub and a password will be sent through SMS to the passenger’s mobile phone.

According to the other option being considered, passengers will have to visit the RailTel website, register themselves and purchase credit to access the Net.

While the charges for Internet use and the security issues are being worked out, officials said payment could be through credit, debit card or Net banking.

Bank savings deposits lose ground

Savers are now putting relatively less money into current and savings accounts (CASA) of banks, instead parking them in term deposits. This is limiting the ability of banks to raise low-cost resources. At present, commercial banks offer 4 per cent interest on savings accounts after the Reserve Bank of India raised the rate by 50 basis points in May. The revision came after eight years. On the other hand, term deposit rates are an attractive option having moved up around 250 basis points over the past six months in the one-three year maturity periods following regular interest rate hikes by the central bank. The State Bank of India, for instance, offers 9.25 per cent interest on deposits of one year to less than two years. With the rate gap widening, bankers have been witnessing a decline in demand deposits, while term deposits have shown a strong growth. Demand deposits are deposits that can be withdrawn quickly. This shift has affected the banks’ CASA ratio — the proportion of current account and savings account deposits in total deposits — during the first quarter of this fiscal. The ratio has been lower on a sequential basis. While some lenders such as Axis Bank saw only a marginal fall in their ratio, it was more pronounced for a few such as Corporation Bank and IDBI Bank. In IDBI Bank, the CASA ratio dropped even after the bank waived all transaction and service charges on current and savings accounts. Banks have been laying stress on CASA deposits because of their low costs — current account is non-interest bearing, while the 4-per-cent interest payable on savings accounts is less than half of what they pay on term deposits. Hence, a fall in the CASA ratio may affect margins at a later stage. This was evident in the first-quarter numbers of ICICI Bank, the SBI and some other banks where current account deposits showed a fall in absolute terms. Tough task Bankers now admit that mobilising more current account and savings account deposits will be a challenge given the fact that interest rates are likely to stay at higher levels for some more time. Others say that rates have peaked. IDBI Bank recently trimmed its CASA ratio guidance for the year to 17-18 per cent from an earlier estimate of 25 per cent, while ICICI Bank hopes to post an average ratio of around 40 per cent for the year.