UK train passengers face loss of free wi-fi

[Richardr]

It would be interesting to know how much WiFi adds to the cost of a ticket. There is a reasonable argument to say that you should only pay for what you need. Those who need WiFi should pay for it without being subsidised by those who do not need it.

If it adds passengers that would not otherwise use the train, then it isn't a cost.

 

[Jim the Jim]

Internet connectivity: prohibitively expensive for rail companies, but so incredibly cheap for passengers to sort it out for themselves that it doesn't matter, apparently. It's mind-boggling.

 

[Bartsimho]

Internet connectivity: prohibitively expensive for rail companies, but so incredibly cheap for passengers to sort it out for themselves that it doesn't matter, apparently. It's mind-boggling.

Everything's prohibitively expensive for rail companies but possible for everyone else including Bus Companies and even some Airlines offer WiFi (if you pay them an actual handsome fee though)

 

[heathrowrail]

WiFi on GWR hasn't worked properly since the IET's were brought in, it constantly either buffers or cuts out. Especially if you put your phone down for 10 minutes and then want to reconnect. It's the same for First or Standard, the 165/166s are even worse! The 387s depending on which carriage you sit in seem to be the only units where it works. Having wifi on trains is absolutely essential given how ordering food, tickets, railcards all require data which isn't always possible with network providers.

 

[Krokodil]

Does anyone know who is selling m-tickets that can't be displayed without internet access?

I waste a considerable amount of time waiting for people to sift through their emails and download the PDF files of a family's worth of eTickets.

It would be interesting to know how much WiFi adds to the cost of a ticket. There is a reasonable argument to say that you should only pay for what you need. Those who need WiFi should pay for it without being subsidised by those who do not need it.

How many decimal places would you like it rounded to? It'll be a teeny tiny fraction of a penny.

 

[Energy]

I recall an episode of Channel 5's The Hotel Inspector presented by Alex Polizzi when she was appalled that the hotel she was inspecting was giving away free wi-fi. One of the major improvements she recommended was charging. I don't think they did.

I can't recall the last time I stayed in a hotel that didn't provide free wifi, nor most of even the smallest restaurants. This thread seems to reflect opposite traits in society. Those who push back against new technology, some even wanting to ban all phones on trains, and those who are well ahead of trends with the best phones/laptops and internet access packages.

I'm in the middle. I like the standby option of railway wifi, but in most situations it's not of high enough quality to be worth paying for. Mobile reception is also poor in many older buildings so any free wifi is greatly appreciated.

Most cheaper hotels provide free WiFi but charge for faster speed/more data. Restaurants need internet access anyway for card machines and the like so the cost of a customer network is minimal given how cheap fixed line internet is. For a train there are additional costs since the backhaul required is so much more. IMO trains should keep free WiFi but have a paid (included in first class) tier with faster speeds.

As for current train WiFi I get the feeling that its bad because nobody cares enough to fix it, while backhaul is a concern 200mbps is possible with a good antenna at 4G so multiple SIM cards across multiple networks should be enough backhaul (at least where there is signal). Captive portals have no excuse, if Starbucks can get theirs to pop up and work correctly so can the railway.

 

[AM9]

Maybe a penny or two?

So that "penny or two" is on every fare, including those travelling on trains with no Wi-fi, trains where the Wi-fi is unusable and journeys that are too short for passenger to bother taking their phone of mobile data and back on again. I've no idea what proportion of the total number of journeys have the passenger use Wi-fi, but if all of those that don't didn't get charged the 'penny or two', it could mean that the amount that the users are charged might be enough to discourage the freeloaders, meaning an even smaller number of paying users.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 May 2023 ==

I waste a considerable amount of time waiting for people to sift through their emails and download the PDF files of a family's worth of eTickets.

How many decimal places would you like it rounded to? It'll be a teeny tiny fraction of a penny.

Do you have evidence for that?

 

[jon0844]

I was guessing and probably over estimated. It wouldn't be particularly hard to work out the cost.

As I've said before, some networks charge businesses £2+VAT per month for unlimited data SIMs (including 5G access) so in bulk it might be even less. If you need at least two SIMs, that's still not a huge cost for the data side.

Then you have the equipment cost and maintenance, and I doubt there's a great deal of maintenance required.

So a fraction of a penny is probably closer to the mark.

Might be more appropriate to enquire about the cost of providing toilet paper in the trains toilets, or hand soap.

 

[AdamWW]

I was guessing and probably over estimated. It wouldn't be particularly hard to work out the cost.

As I've said before, some networks charge businesses £2+VAT per month for unlimited data SIMs (including 5G access) so in bulk it might be even less. If you need at least two SIMs, that's still not a huge cost for the data side.

Then you have the equipment cost and maintenance, and I doubt there's a great deal of maintenance required.

So a fraction of a penny is probably closer to the mark.

Might be more appropriate to enquire about the cost of providing toilet paper in the trains toilets, or hand soap.

I do not think that when train fares are worked out the starting point is the costs of providing the service.

Regulated fares are of course set by whatever formula is being used at the time which at the moment I presume is chosen to give the highest increase considered politically acceptable.

Other fares should be set to maximise revenue.

 

[whoosh]

One of the great aspects of train travel is being able to switch off from the pace of modern life; to sit back in your seat, enjoy the views of gently-rolling countryside from your window and to feel at peace with the world. A desire for such a state of mind doesn't mean you're stuck in the past, more that you recognise that, whilst technology may occasionally be useful, more often than not it's a needless distraction.

I can see where you're coming from with this - the point of view of a leisure traveller. Looking out of the window and enjoying the journey can be as much of a pleasure and part of the trip, as the destination itself.
However, if you look at it from the point of view of a commuter, doing the same journey everyday - some of which (maybe ALL of the return journey home) will take place in the dark during winter months, or a business traveller (which the railway needs to regain) who wants to do some work or prepare for a face to face meeting/presentation later on, then access to WiFi seems a valid desire.

I recall an episode of Channel 5's The Hotel Inspector presented by Alex Polizzi when she was appalled that the hotel she was inspecting was giving away free wi-fi. One of the major improvements she recommended was charging. I don't think they did.

I can't recall the last time I stayed in a hotel that didn't provide free wifi, nor most of even the smallest restaurants. This thread seems to reflect opposite traits in society. Those who push back against new technology, some even wanting to ban all phones on trains, and those who are well ahead of trends with the best phones/laptops and internet access packages.

It's interesting you mention hotels. My parents stayed in Italy back in the 70s and the hot water was only available for very limited hours - one or two hours a day.
Can you imagine that happening now?
One or two stars on TripAdvisor at best?!

Making things easier and better for customers is moving forwards.

 

[Stephen42]

I was guessing and probably over estimated. It wouldn't be particularly hard to work out the cost.

As I've said before, some networks charge businesses £2+VAT per month for unlimited data SIMs (including 5G access) so in bulk it might be even less. If you need at least two SIMs, that's still not a huge cost for the data side.

Then you have the equipment cost and maintenance, and I doubt there's a great deal of maintenance required.

So a fraction of a penny is probably closer to the mark.

Might be more appropriate to enquire about the cost of providing toilet paper in the trains toilets, or hand soap.

I imagine those low price options come with acceptable usage policies and if you tried to funnel a whole train's worth of WiFi down them you'd soon get a polite letter about them restricting or terminating your service.

Many train providers appear to use icomera for their wifi, on the website they have this case study for Nothern. Most relevant part quoted below but indicates it's not a flat fee and data spend alone can be significant. I've changed what's in bold. With a provider helping shape the traffic their services won't be free either and there's probably a retainer for reported service issues.

The Challenge of Ever-Growing Data Demand and Cost​

Northern’s passenger Wi-Fi service works by utilising the available cellular capacity in the geographical areas its trains pass through, in order to deliver data to those on board. With over 340 trains travelling on its network, and an average of more than half a million users connecting to its Wi-Fi every month, data usage (and, in turn, costs) could quickly begin to add up. What’s more, this data expenditure was largely outside the transport operator’s control, given that the provision of Wi-Fi to rail passengers is mandated in the UK.

Pre-pandemic, as a result of its data usage, the transport operator was expecting to quadruple its data spend. Of course, when Covid hit and lockdowns were enforced, Northern saw a sharp wind-down in data use – But, as lockdowns eased in the summer of 2021, and passengers began to return to public transport, data consumption started to rise steadily again.

The other angle is the "nice to haves" on the Class 700 trains the asset value is £22m, just wifi and seatback tables on a proportion of a fleet, across the life and assuming 8 times the number of seats of passengers per day per train it's already over a penny. That's before considering data cost, maintenance or anything else, just the amount paid to the ROSCO.

 

[CaptainHaddock]

Of course no one can answer "yes" to that question - rational or not - no one spends every second of their waking hours on the internet.

You obviously don't know any teenagers!

 

[jon0844]

I imagine those low price options come with acceptable usage policies and if you tried to funnel a whole train's worth of WiFi down them you'd soon get a polite letter about them restricting or terminating your service.

On Three the FUP was 1TB. Not sure what it is today.

EE used to offer the BBC plans with 2TB (for broadcast) and I'm sure they'll be able to see the average use for all trains, and price accordingly.

Given heavy data applications are restricted, I expect the overall usage to be well within that 1000GB allowance. Most likely nearer a tenth of that.

But I am only making a slightly educated guess.

 

[Krokodil]

The other angle is the "nice to haves" on the Class 700 trains the asset value is £22m, just wifi and seatback tables on a proportion of a fleet, across the life and assuming 8 times the number of seats of passengers per day per train it's already over a penny. That's before considering data cost, maintenance or anything else, just the amount paid to the ROSCO.

I would say that the average 700 sees far more than eight unique passengers per seat over the course of a day, once you've accounted for standing passengers, multiple passengers per journey, the number of passengers per journey etc.

The sort of services where the cost might amount to a penny per ticket are the intercity journeys where passengers spend long periods of time on the same train. The very services where the ability to work onboard is valued.

 

[ar10642]

I would say that the average 700 sees far more than eight unique passengers per seat over the course of a day, once you've accounted for standing passengers, multiple passengers per journey, the number of passengers per journey etc.

The sort of services where the cost might amount to a penny per ticket are the intercity journeys where passengers spend long periods of time on the same train. The very services where the ability to work onboard is valued.

Remember you can travel quite long distances on 700s as well, my journey is typically about 2 hours and 10 minutes on one of them. Most people are getting on or off in London though.

 

[AM9]

Remember you can travel quite long distances on 700s as well, my journey is typically about 2 hours and 10 minutes on one of them. Most people are getting on or off in London though.

You are right, few passengers travel far on both sides of the core in the same journey. I would suggest that the largest number of journeys beyond zone 6 on both sides would be to/from Luton or Gatwick airports from the opposite side on London.

 

[AY1975]

Does anyone know who is selling m-tickets that can't be displayed without internet access?

The only ones that I know of are First Class upgrades bought using the Seatfrog app. They are sent to you as a QR code within an email. You need a strong enough wi-fi or mobile data signal to make the email display the barcode, but once you've done so it should stay visible even if the signal is too weak or non-existent. To be on the safe side, once you've got your phone to display the barcode it's best to keep that email showing on your phone or tablet until the ticket inspector has been round, though. Alternatively, you could print out that email in the same way as you can with an e-ticket.

Whenever I buy an upgrade using Seatfrog I always try to retrieve the barcode using the on-station wi-fi or mobile data before boarding the train to be on the safe side, but that isn't always possible. Failing that, and if I can't get it to work on the train either, I show the email to the inspector and say here's my upgrade but it isn't showing the barcode because the wi-fi and mobile data signals are too weak, and they are usually then happy to come back to me next time the train stops at a station or passes through a built-up area where there's a better chance of getting a strong enough signal.

The only m-tickets I have used are TfW Multiflexes and these do not need internet access to display, and (now within some limits) can even be activated off-line.

I presume ScotRail m-tickets are similar. I've never used either ScotRail or TfW m-tickets, though.

 

[SussexSeagull]

I can rarely get it to work on the Southern and Thameslink services I use so if they hadn’t announced it I probably wouldn’t have noticed they had take it away.

I am travelling to and from Bedford once a week at the moment (apart from this week due to the strike, but I digress) and often have need to do some ’work’ for a personal commitment coming home and have learnt to do it before reaching Finsbury Park as there won’t be a connection after that, including the Brighton Main Line bit which has several flat spots.

it’s more nickel and diming by the government trying to make the railways as unwelcoming as possible. Everyone involved in the railway should be resisting this with a passion.

 

[jon0844]

While competition has been good for the most part when it comes to telecoms, compared to say energy/water, there are still issues such as EE going it alone on adding coverage at St Pancras station low level, Northern City Line, HS1 tunnels etc. If you're on another network you still have ZERO coverage in these locations.

I assume that while TfL has gone with a third party to do the work and networks can tag on to it, it has been done differently by Network Rail. Maybe other networks can tag on later, but it seems a little disjointed.

Now of course the EE coverage means the trains can now get a signal to pass on, but obviously the lack of DfT money to add Wi-Fi to the remaining 700s means that it's pot luck whether you even have Wi-Fi! It would be nice for Siemens to be given the go ahead to fit the entire fleet, or at least get the funding to do it when the trains get their next refresh.

 

[hacman]

From a hardware point of view it certainly is minimal difference. On our stock (196/350/323/172) it equates to 1 Access Point and 1 router with multiple SIM cards. Yes the router is likely a specialised one rather than an off the shelf model, but it's needed for the staff requirements anyway. The cost difference in a standard and a high user AP is marginal.

The difference is far from minimal, and the cost of the hardware can't be considered in isolation.

Each coach needs it's own AP for a start - and for alot of rolling stock (350, 323 and 172 in your example) you then need to run wiring along the coaches, and between them which requires inter-car jumper cables that are not cheap. Most newer trains come with an Ethernet backbone pre-installed, but sometimes this is still a quite pricy optional extra - and even if the backbone is there, there is no assurance that the manufacturer/ROSCO/TOC will let the WiFi contractor use it for this purpose.

The difference between a consumer AP, and an enterprise/industrial grade AP is quite considerable. You also then need to factor in antenna hardware, installation by skilled staff, and software/time to manage it all. To give an example, a Moxa AWK3131 (a commonly used but rather crap rail approved AP) comes in at £600-£800, before taxes, markup, mounting hardware, antennas or anything else. Moving up to something like an ORing TGAP-66xx series and you're starting to look at £2100, for a device that is still only 802.11n, though does add a better radio, 5Ghz support and a number of other things. Considering these sort of products are usually sold via system integrators, who offer an end-to-end service, this price only goes up further.

The same applies to the router - a big part of the cost here are the modems, the cabling and antennas, combiners, etc. So adding more SIMs to boost capacity is not such a simple task. The infrastructure at the shore-side also needs to be sized appropriately, and the difference between providing staff/systems connectivity and passenger WiFi is again considerable as when you're providing an Internet service to the general public there are many additional things you need to start doing that you'd otherwise not have to worry about.

The "it's already there for other things" argument has never stacked up for rail WiFi, and it sadly never will.

 

[mrmartin]

Yes this is one of those things where it is much cheaper for the consumer to buy it (mobile data) than the train operating company to offer it.

I assume you can't just use any old telcoms contractor to install and maintain the kit, they'll need specific rail approval/certification? This will no doubt increase the labour price massively.

I've worked on trains for probably 2 decades now via the internet and the only time I've regularly used on train wifi is southeastern in the tunnels in HS1 as I'm not on EE, but the train wifi is. And TfL station wifi obviously but that's simply because there is no 4G/5G in most places (yet!).

I've really never managed to get it working on literally what must be hundreds of attempts. Usually something goes wrong, and you can't even load the bbc news homepage.

I'd also recommend people if they do use mobile data a lot on trains to switch their phone to 4G/5G only (on Android at least, I doubt you can do this on iOS). Half of the issue with coverage is the phone switching back to 3G in poor coverage areas and then not switching back up to 4G/5G. This has imporved the coverage from about 50% of the time on the GWML on o2 to 80%+ (inc severn tunnel). It's a gamechanger!

 

[Krokodil]

£2100 is peanuts in a unit that cost several million.

There may be a case for not installing it on inner suburban units, but it's valuable on intercity trains where people are more likely to want to get work done, and on trains serving rural areas with poor coverage.

 

[tomuk]

£2100 is peanuts in a unit that cost several million.

There may be a case for not installing it on inner suburban units, but it's valuable on intercity trains where people are more likely to want to get work done, and on trains serving rural areas with poor coverage.

£2100 is purely the hardware price of the router. An end of life not very up to date one at that. The Oring router specified is only 802.11n and has only two 4G LTE modems. There will be lot more additional coats for accessories, fitting, design, approvals etc particularly in a railway environment to suitable approvals.

 

[sheepy1991]

Internet connectivity: prohibitively expensive for rail companies, but so incredibly cheap for passengers to sort it out for themselves that it doesn't matter, apparently. It's mind-boggling.

Absolutely not. TOC’s / now the DAFT pay a minimal amount for wifi coverage over what they would normally use for train operations. Most modern trains use the WIFI setup to communicate information back go fleet / control for routine operations. To provide customer WIFI beyond that is not even worth arguing about as it all uses the same infrastructure on train.

 

[ComUtoR]

To provide customer WIFI beyond that is not even worth arguing about as it all uses the same infrastructure on train.

Our passenger WiFi disrupts the Operational communication.

 

[frodshamfella]

Seems another backward step by the government .

 

[ar10642]

Absolutely not. TOC’s / now the DAFT pay a minimal amount for wifi coverage over what they would normally use for train operations. Most modern trains use the WIFI setup to communicate information back go fleet / control for routine operations. To provide customer WIFI beyond that is not even worth arguing about as it all uses the same infrastructure on train.

It does feel like only the UK rail industry/UK government could this particular mountain out of this molehill.

 

[hacman]

£2100 is peanuts in a unit that cost several million.

That's per car, sometimes with more needed, and as mentioned is the AP only. You'll easily spend 3-4 times that on the other stuff needed to go with it. You've then got to have some sort of arrangement in place to actually service the thing, as there will be a certain rate of failures and defects over time.

It's also extra cost ontop of the millions that the unit cost, and is financed in a very different way to the unit its self. Very few TOCs are actually paying cash for their fleet, whereas the installation of WiFi and other services usually is.

There is then the opportunity cost for this spend - spending money on WiFi means that money can't be spent on something else.

£2100 is purely the hardware price of the router. An end of life not very up to date one at that. The Oring router specified is only 802.11n and has only two 4G LTE modems. There will be lot more additional coats for accessories, fitting, design, approvals etc particularly in a railway environment to suitable approvals.

Sadly there isn't much in the way of 802.11ac hardware that is rail approved yet, mostly because the benefits that it brings aren't really needed in the industrial space yet. The industrial WiFi and Ethernet market progresses at an order of magnitude slower than the consumer and enterprise markets, which can be frustrating at times!

 

[jon0844]

I am sure Icomera has been offering 5G connectivity for a while, so I'd be surprised if their kit isn't 802.11ac, and by now I'm sure they'll be offering an .ax system. They sell globally and even if the UK wants to save every penny, there are countries more open minded and competitive with alternative means of transport.

While we continue to use GSM-R which is likely fine for most cases, an LTE version has been in use elsewhere for some time too.

 

[zwk500]

That's per car, sometimes with more needed, and as mentioned is the AP only. You'll easily spend 3-4 times that on the other stuff needed to go with it. You've then got to have some sort of arrangement in place to actually service the thing, as there will be a certain rate of failures and defects over time.

It's also extra cost ontop of the millions that the unit cost, and is financed in a very different way to the unit its self. Very few TOCs are actually paying cash for their fleet, whereas the installation of WiFi and other services usually is.

4 times £2,100 is still a total cost of c.£10k per car, which is a rounding error in the scheme of a vehicle costing multiple millions. I could understand simply not including it at the start, I could understand not renewing it when contracts came up or whatever, but actively seeking to remove it seems very silly.