An Indian train station that introduced free WiFi for commuters has become a hotspot for porn searches. Patna station has attracted a new wave of visitors, not all of whom are there to catch a train.
"It seems users at Patna junction are least interested in knowing the arrival and departure times of trains," a railway employee told the Times of India. The discovery came from a survey by telecom providers RailTel, who managed to find some very honest subjects.
The station in Bihar, eastern India, is one of a wave of stations across the country to receive free WiFi as part of a collaboration between RailTel and Google. Patna’s commuters first got the facility just over a month ago.
Patna came first for porn searches, followed by Jaipur, then Bengaluru and New Delhi. RailTel played down the results, saying in a statement that they do not monitor commuters’ web usage, but did not expand on the results of the survey, cited by another RailTel official.
"I have seen many youngsters going to Patna junction only to watch pornography. It is quite embarrassing for passengers, especially women," one commuter told the news outlet, adding that the station should restrict the WiFi to prevent “perverted” use.
Currently only one gigabyte is available at the station, leaving porn enthusiasts slowly streaming their fix, but plans are already afoot to increase the capacity to 10 gigabytes. The free WiFi scheme aims to provide 400 stations across India with the facility in the next three years.
The station, which sees more than 200 trains pass through every day, must be very easy to navigate as schedules and facilities did not appear in the top searches, instead Wikipedia, Bollywood and YouTube were the content of choice for passengers after pornography.
READ MORE: Entire Indian village fined for breaching ‘draconian’ prohibition law