Kind of wondering people’s thoughts on this; I’m used to travelling TransPennine and the WiFi has been useless pretty much every time I’ve been on the train. Not sure there would be much difference in losing it.
All people want is to stay connected. Just make sure phone companies have full coverage along tracks (they don’t). There probably isn’t much of a business case for providing wifi.
Used it a couple of times on Avanti recently, it’s largely useless. I assume because it uses the same network as everyone else and when moving at 125mph with 500 people connected it has the same limitations as your phone would.
The WiFi on the ones here barely works anyway,…
Does any aspect of our trains actually work properly?
What fucking WiFi access? I’ve literally had better signal in the Lake District than on ANY train.
Oh no.
What are we going to do without 56k modem era WiFi that costs a fiver a day to use?
Someone call the cops!
> DfT spokesperson said: “Our railways are currently not financially sustainable, and it is unfair to continue asking taxpayers to foot the bill.
Who the fuck do you think is riding the trains?
>the DfT has told its contracted operators in England that they should cease offering it if they cannot justify it financially.
Why on Earth is the DfT concerned about the financial sustainability of private operators?
Cost cuts = trying to find more profits for shareholders whilst offering worse service for passengers.
The Wi-Fi on the train is just mobile internet through a wireless router. If you’ve not not mobile signal, likely the train internet has no signal either. It’s basically no better than tethering. It’s worse even, it’s potentially a security risk.
It never works! If it would bring down rail fares for them to ditch their token effort at wifi this would be good, but of course they will pocket the saving.
If the infrastructure to put it there has already been put into place, what money are they saving by turning it off? The meager electricity costs? Their deal with their ISP? Ludicrious.
>Rail passengers in England.
Phew. I’m glad Transport For Wales’ 28kb/s 20MB download limit wifi is safe.
What was all that stuff rail bosses were going on about when trying to beat down the unions over the last year?
“We need to cut jobs to modernising the railway services”, was it?
Yeah, great fucking job, you greedy fools. Round of applause for this clown act.
EDIT: I know the responsibilities and details of this may not line up specificly to Network Rail, who are the bosses I’m referring to. Still this takes the cake, doesn’t it?
They should stop saying “cost cutting” and start saying “profit generators”
Slightly off-topic perhaps, but these comments are doing a lot to validate my long-held belief that streaming, cloud computing and so on are a double-edged sword.
That said, I bet Sweet Fanny Adams of the cost savings from cancelling their mobile broadband plans gets passed down to us fare-paying passengers.
They’d have to actually provide *trains* first. Looking at you, Northern Rail
Maybe this is just privilege speaking but I have next to no use for public Wi-Fi unless I’m in a cellular dead spot. I have more than enough data and don’t care for the security vulnerability that is unencrypted Wi-Fi.
Presumptuous that my train turns up or I have a seat to even consider using the WiFi.
What wifi? You mean the one where you have to create an account so they can scrape your data and sell it to people and then the wifi you “get” is so bad you might as well not have used it in the first place? I had a ticket to go up to my parents’ place on a train run by Virgin at the time, they advertised wifi like it was some new thing. I tried to get on, no signal.
Perhaps if they hadn’t priced people off the trains and back into their cars they’d make a profit.
Took the train from Stafford to Euston last Tuesday. £147. Train carriage had 5 people including myself in it. This is a peak train as well, just after 7am.
Advance tickets are 12 weeks on advance in you’re lucky. Doesn’t work for anyone everyone. Why we have to gamble on a non refundable ticket 3 months in advance I’ll never know. Couldn’t tell you where I need to be next month let alone 3.
Today it cost me £45 in diesel return and £8.50 to park at Westfield in White City.
Granted it takes a bit longer, but for the sake of £100 a day I’ll suffer it.
Remember what that twat Grant Shapps said “it’s vital we continue to invest in our railway”..
Good luck.
What a nice distraction story. What they’re actually doing is causing disputes with staff, massively cutting services, increasing prices, removing cheaper tickets and a hundred other things which will have much more of an impact than no wifi
Rail passengers to endure further quality of service drop in order to maximize stakeholders profits.
Fixed it for you.
I only rely on train wifi once or twice a week via Southeastern between Kent and London. Absolutely no point on commuter trains during the week. Otherwise fine on weekends.
If they’re cutting the WiFi, given the price of train fares, what exactly are we paying for?
Regularly get the train from south of Glasgow to Birmingham. Usually get the train from my local station to Carlisle (ScotRail) and the Wi-Fi is great. Pick up the much more modern Avanti west coast train at Carlisle and the Wi-Fi is utterly baws and intermittent at best. Would think it’d be the other way round!
Oh and this is just going to make people find other modes of transport!
Cost cuts for bigger bonuses, fares are at an all time high yet services are none existent, we’ve just had yet a other price increase while they’ve cut the hourly amount of trains to our stop from 4 to 1. Their an absoulte joke, need to be fully renationalised ASAP.
So we pay extortionate ticket prices already for the trains and they are going to lower the quality of the service even more?
Think of the poor shareholders who lose out due to greedy customers wanting WiFi for their extortionate train journey!
Higher prices for worse services?
Ah, of course, stock holders and CEO’s gotta get their bag first
Inch by inch, bit by bit everything just because a little bit crapper each time..
30 comments
Kind of wondering people’s thoughts on this; I’m used to travelling TransPennine and the WiFi has been useless pretty much every time I’ve been on the train. Not sure there would be much difference in losing it.
All people want is to stay connected. Just make sure phone companies have full coverage along tracks (they don’t). There probably isn’t much of a business case for providing wifi.
Used it a couple of times on Avanti recently, it’s largely useless. I assume because it uses the same network as everyone else and when moving at 125mph with 500 people connected it has the same limitations as your phone would.
The WiFi on the ones here barely works anyway,…
Does any aspect of our trains actually work properly?
What fucking WiFi access? I’ve literally had better signal in the Lake District than on ANY train.
Oh no.
What are we going to do without 56k modem era WiFi that costs a fiver a day to use?
Someone call the cops!
> DfT spokesperson said: “Our railways are currently not financially sustainable, and it is unfair to continue asking taxpayers to foot the bill.
Who the fuck do you think is riding the trains?
>the DfT has told its contracted operators in England that they should cease offering it if they cannot justify it financially.
Why on Earth is the DfT concerned about the financial sustainability of private operators?
Cost cuts = trying to find more profits for shareholders whilst offering worse service for passengers.
The Wi-Fi on the train is just mobile internet through a wireless router. If you’ve not not mobile signal, likely the train internet has no signal either. It’s basically no better than tethering. It’s worse even, it’s potentially a security risk.
It never works! If it would bring down rail fares for them to ditch their token effort at wifi this would be good, but of course they will pocket the saving.
If the infrastructure to put it there has already been put into place, what money are they saving by turning it off? The meager electricity costs? Their deal with their ISP? Ludicrious.
>Rail passengers in England.
Phew. I’m glad Transport For Wales’ 28kb/s 20MB download limit wifi is safe.
What was all that stuff rail bosses were going on about when trying to beat down the unions over the last year?
“We need to cut jobs to modernising the railway services”, was it?
Yeah, great fucking job, you greedy fools. Round of applause for this clown act.
EDIT: I know the responsibilities and details of this may not line up specificly to Network Rail, who are the bosses I’m referring to. Still this takes the cake, doesn’t it?
They should stop saying “cost cutting” and start saying “profit generators”
Slightly off-topic perhaps, but these comments are doing a lot to validate my long-held belief that streaming, cloud computing and so on are a double-edged sword.
That said, I bet Sweet Fanny Adams of the cost savings from cancelling their mobile broadband plans gets passed down to us fare-paying passengers.
They’d have to actually provide *trains* first. Looking at you, Northern Rail
Maybe this is just privilege speaking but I have next to no use for public Wi-Fi unless I’m in a cellular dead spot. I have more than enough data and don’t care for the security vulnerability that is unencrypted Wi-Fi.
Presumptuous that my train turns up or I have a seat to even consider using the WiFi.
What wifi? You mean the one where you have to create an account so they can scrape your data and sell it to people and then the wifi you “get” is so bad you might as well not have used it in the first place? I had a ticket to go up to my parents’ place on a train run by Virgin at the time, they advertised wifi like it was some new thing. I tried to get on, no signal.
Perhaps if they hadn’t priced people off the trains and back into their cars they’d make a profit.
Took the train from Stafford to Euston last Tuesday. £147. Train carriage had 5 people including myself in it. This is a peak train as well, just after 7am.
Advance tickets are 12 weeks on advance in you’re lucky. Doesn’t work for anyone everyone. Why we have to gamble on a non refundable ticket 3 months in advance I’ll never know. Couldn’t tell you where I need to be next month let alone 3.
Today it cost me £45 in diesel return and £8.50 to park at Westfield in White City.
Granted it takes a bit longer, but for the sake of £100 a day I’ll suffer it.
Remember what that twat Grant Shapps said “it’s vital we continue to invest in our railway”..
Good luck.
What a nice distraction story. What they’re actually doing is causing disputes with staff, massively cutting services, increasing prices, removing cheaper tickets and a hundred other things which will have much more of an impact than no wifi
Rail passengers to endure further quality of service drop in order to maximize stakeholders profits.
Fixed it for you.
I only rely on train wifi once or twice a week via Southeastern between Kent and London. Absolutely no point on commuter trains during the week. Otherwise fine on weekends.
If they’re cutting the WiFi, given the price of train fares, what exactly are we paying for?
Regularly get the train from south of Glasgow to Birmingham. Usually get the train from my local station to Carlisle (ScotRail) and the Wi-Fi is great. Pick up the much more modern Avanti west coast train at Carlisle and the Wi-Fi is utterly baws and intermittent at best. Would think it’d be the other way round!
Oh and this is just going to make people find other modes of transport!
Cost cuts for bigger bonuses, fares are at an all time high yet services are none existent, we’ve just had yet a other price increase while they’ve cut the hourly amount of trains to our stop from 4 to 1. Their an absoulte joke, need to be fully renationalised ASAP.
So we pay extortionate ticket prices already for the trains and they are going to lower the quality of the service even more?
Think of the poor shareholders who lose out due to greedy customers wanting WiFi for their extortionate train journey!
Higher prices for worse services?
Ah, of course, stock holders and CEO’s gotta get their bag first
Inch by inch, bit by bit everything just because a little bit crapper each time..