28.09.12
Free wi fi on trains
Source: Tom via www.railtechnologymagazine.com
Article: Give or Sell
Whilst I, along with most business travellers, would welcome free wi fi, there is one benefit to users from paid-for service: capacity. On the East Coast, wi fi has varied between free and paid for (except in first class, where it’s always been free). Once the free service became widely used, there was a serious problem with capacity, to the point that even logging on was near-impossible in the evening peak out of Kings Cross, and the actual data rates were only just useable. Since charging was introduced, the availability, reliability, and effectiveness has been a lot better.
Now, this might be because fewer people use the wi fi, and/or because more investment & maintenance is provided from the fees. The ideal situation is that a free service would have adequate reliable capacity for all, but that might be too much to ask for free.
I’d suggest that there needs to be better co-operation between providers, and a more consistent charging model. As a user, I want to buy access based on actual time used [not a ‘daily’ rate], and use this on a journey across all train operators (because we have to do this for many journeys) within a reasonable time limit. Now that would be both better value, and encourage controlled use (because you can save your unused time for another day) which in turn naturally rations the finite data capacity of an on-train service.
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