Cross Country WiFi

I have mentioned, okay moaned, about the lack of wifi on Cross Country trains and the problems with using 3G in their Voyager trains as their construction was very good in blocking phone and 3G signals.

I realised it must have been some time since I last travelled with Cross Country as on my most recent trip with them I was astonished and surprised to find that there was wifi…

Gosh!

This I had to try. Alas it wasn’t free and when I checked the tariffs it wasn’t cheap either.

There are two tariffs, one based on elapsed time and the other on total minutes.

So for a one off long journey then it will cost you anything up to £6.

Now I don’t use Cross Country that often, but did consider the total minutes package. For £18 I would get 30 hours of wifi that was valid for a year.

In the end for the test I went with the one hour for £2. I did like how I could pay by SMS, but that does mean you need a phone signal!

Overall the speeds were low compared to potential 3G speeds. This isn’t a service you could use for doing certain things, the terms of use explicitly say you can’t use it for catch-up TV (ie iPlayer), downloading large files (ie system updates) or file sharing.

So how did it go. Well apart from a couple of glitches on my journey, I was quite pleased with the performance. I can’t really expect decent wifi when travelling through a tunnel for example.

On the return journey I decided to rely on 3G and the experience was awful in comparison to Cross Country WiFi. It think it is a serious option if I need internet when travelling by train, especially Cross Country.