By Andy McCue, 27 July 2006 15:20
silicon.com tested out GNER's wi-fi service on a journey from London King's Cross to Peterborough this week. Aside from a few initial connection problems on the return journey to London the service was fast, reliable and easy to use for receiving and sending emails, IM conversations with colleagues in the office and browsing the web.
Peter Kingsland, MD of SCI Solutions, the company that provides the Icomera satellite technology to GNER, is pictured above (surfing the silicon.com website, of course) on the journey.
The service is free in first class but standard class passengers must pay between £2.95 and £9.95 for a range of wi-fi access packages. The average usage time is 80 minutes and GNER currently has around 700 wi-fi users per train per four week period, with about 70 per cent of those being in first class, although usage in standard class is now growing exponentially.
GNER claims 22 per cent of journeys that have shifted from air to rail did so for wi-fi, and 19 per cent from cars to rail made the swap for wi-fi too.
Photo credit: Andy McCue
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