Indian Railways partners with IIT Kanpur to bring real time train tracking

Indian Railways has partnered with IIT Kanpur for real time train tracking via SMS for mobile users, the Business Standard reports. To get advantages of this service, one has to send an SMS to 09415139139 or 09664139139 with the train number in the message box for knowing the exact location of a train on real-time basis. The technology arm of the Indian Railways, CRIS, is expected to sign a MoU with IIT-Kanpur for the execution of this service.
The service is currently available on 36  premier trains including Mumbai Rajdhani, Howrah Rajdhani, Dibrugarh Rajdhani, Sealdah Duronto and Shatabdi trains for Bhopal, Kanpur and Amritsar. The service is expected to be extended further. Reportedly, the pilot project has been concluded for the service, and the Delhi will be home to the datacenter that receives all the data from the country.
The Indian Railways have already partners with ISRO to develop GPS trackers for trains with an accuracy of 10 meters and a latency of 2 minutes. The installation of these GPS devices could cost between Rs 70,000 and Rs 1,00,000 per train, according to a MediaNama report. In fact, it has already been reported that the Railways intends to integrate a GPS app with Google Maps so that passengers are able to view their position on Google Maps in real-time.
While this bodes well for the Indian Train passenger, the Indian Railways already has a web based train tracking mechanism in place called Trainenquiry.com, which was launched in partnership with Railyatri.in.