10 January,2009 10:50 AM IST | | PTI
Crowded and long train rides on the suburban rail network of Western Railways may soon be more bearable with LCD screens broadcasting entertainment and advertising content to be installed in coaches of all trains by next year.
The screens will be fitted in five 12-coach trains as a pilot project, the first of which is expected to be operational from today.
"The screens will broadcast a mixture of advertising and entertainment content on them," L Vijaybushan Reddy, MD of Integracomm, which will install the screens, said.
Six LCD screens will be fitted at a strategic height in each of the 12 coaches of a train and will have features to prevent them being tampered or damaged by miscreants, he said.
A video player preloaded with content is fitted in one of the screens in each coach and broadcasts content to each of the six screens in a coach.
"We expect to install the screens on all 67 rakes of the Western Railways in the next 12 to 18 months. The technology for providing live content is also there and will be introduced in the future," Reddy said.
In order to prevent theft of the screens while the trains are parked or in use, sophisticated alarms have been installed to each of the screens, he said.
If a burglar attempts stealing a screen, apart from an alarm being activated in the train, an SMS would be generated and sent to police authorities present there, Reddy said.
The installation of the screens is also expected to net the Railways a sum of Rs 10 lakh per annum and requires no investment from them, a spokesperson for Western Railways said.
Hype Integracomm expects to generate revenue through advertisements that it will broadcast on the screens, and has signed a five-year contract with the Railways.
The Railways provided advertisers with a captive audience of over 70 lakh per day many of whom travelled for about 20 to 30 minutes in a train on an average, Hype Integracomm officials said.
The screens would also be used to display socially relevant messages, and once live content is provided it would help in the cases of emergencies as well, they said.
"We will also be installing the system soon on the suburban rail network of the Central Railways as well," Jignesh Sharma, CEO of Hype Integracomm, said.
