I’ve noticed that GWR (who were First Great Western) have started to limit their customers’ use of wifi. Three years after free wifi was introduced on their high speed trains, they’ve realised that it’s very popular and have implemented restrictions.
Back in 2007 I wrote an article, This is the age of the train… talking about the refurbishment by FGW, then I said
Do you think I should point out to First Great Western that some train operators provide free wireless on their trains, or do you think that would be pushing it?”
After seven years in 2014, it looked as though they finally listened and added wifi to their carriages on their high speed services from Bristol to London. Back then when trying it out I discovered.
The speed, as you might expect travelling at 125mph is inconsistent, but having done a speed test I was hanging to get between 5-9 Mbps which is more than reasonable. I was also able to stream video using YouTube and iPlayer.
I also asked the question:
Will the travelling public use the wifi, what with 4G and 3G so much more commonplace than back in 2007?
Well it certainly looks like they have been using it, hence the restrictions that GWR have put in place.
It’s nice that they also let you know how it is being used and how much bandwidth is available.
It isn’t surprising that they need to do this, as technically I can’t see them being able to increase the bandwidth easily, so it make sense to restrict usage.
Having said that 15MB is not very much, not in this day of HTML e-mail messages, attachments, Twitter, Facebook and so on…
Well at least it’s still free. Hey Cross Country are you listening?
Me, well I still using my own 4G connection, it’s faster and unlimited data is greater than 15MB.
