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London Tube Stations Finally Get Wi-Fi
judgecorp writes "After trials, Wi-Fi in the London Underground has gone live in two stations (Warren Street and King's Cross), with plans to fit 80 stations out before the Olympics, which are now only a few weeks away. From the article: '“Our new Wi-Fi service is a fantastic deal for Londoners, with live travel updates, entertainment and news freely available to everyone while they are on the move across the capital,” said Gareth Powell, London Underground’s director of strategy and service development. “Wi-Fi at Tube stations will help us improve the journeys of the millions of people that use the Underground everyday at no cost to fare or tax payers.”'"
So they're putting in Wi-Fi so that they can have something to shut off in order to make people feel secure? Sounds great!
"Wi-Fi at Tube stations will help us improve the journeys of the millions of people that use the Underground everyday at no cost to fare or tax payers".
So it was paid for by fairies?
Sydney already have WiFi in some of its train stations :
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/cityrail-free-wifi-trial-rolls-on/story-e6frgakx-1226074428380
" It will be free until after the Olympics have concluded, but customers of Virgin Media and other selected networks will continue to get it free afterwards. Others will be able to use the service on a pay-as-you-go basis."
IOW Just another paid WiFi hotspot, except most ppl will only spend enough time at a tube station to log in and if lucky, maybe load one webpage.
at no cost to fare or tax payers
How?
How were they paid?
I don't get it. This can't be right. The contract isn't free, Virgin doesn't supply services for free... yet apparently, no one is paying for it except "others" after the Olympics.
The Admin and the Engineer
Trying to imagine how many people will be trying to share spectrum at a busy station during rush hour and even with multiple access points in each location on all the available channels that don't overlap I'd have to think there won't be enough to go around.
With regard to "...no cost to fare or tax payers.”' it seems probable that they've put out to bid to WiFi Internet providers to see who gets to sell the service to customers after the Olympics. In all probability London Underground will get a take of the proceeds once free service terminates and normal billing / roming charging begins.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
...the London Underground, on a per-mile basis, is one of the most expensive transit systems in the world, so to say that the wi-fi is free is totally misleading as the cost is covered within the extortionate ticket prices.
Just to give people outside the UK some idea, two weeks ago the missus and I went to a concert in London. I drove the car to Hammersmith in West London and parked there, we got on the Underground to travel two stops to Shepherd's Bush, no more than two miles up the road.
The total cost for 2 return tickets was just under £14 or around $20.
I think that speaks for itself...
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Just at the stations and not on the trains? That's cool to a certain extent but how long does the average traveller spend standing around on the platform? I'd have thought that by the time you've got through any registration faff / entering your e-mail address it's time to get on the train.
The article makes it sound that they are offering free access to a limited range of online services. It is only the "Internet" in the sense that these services are delivered over the Internet, but it is not the Internet in the sense that it only provides access to services approved by the service provider. Those services are in all likelihood revenue generating subsidiaries of Virgin, services paying Virgin for the privilege of being accessible on the subway platforms, or contractual obligations between Virgin and and the transit authority. In otherwords, it's utility as anything other than a propaganda machine is limited.
On top of that, they are only offering platform service. Now I don't know about London's tubes, but every heavy and light rail public transit system that I've seen runs trains at 2 minute intervals (peak hours) to 15 minute intervals (at an hour that you wouldn't want to pull out a gadget). You may be able to pull down a transit schedule and maybe a couple of articles to read on the train, but not much else. Train arrival times will probably be posted on the platform anyhow and the only devices usable on platforms are cell phones and tablets. The former is a terrible reading device for anything more than plain text, the latter is an okay reading device but awkward to handle on a busy platform. People who want that type of service would be better served by their cell phone's data plan anyhow since chances are that it's unfiltered and may work on the platforms anyhow. (I can't speak for London's system, but Toronto and Vancouver have decent cell reception on the platforms).
In other words, big freaking deal. Let me know when they offer real internet service and service that can be access in the place where you're spending most of your time: on the train.
Trouble with the Oyster card, it's the forcing of costs onto the passenger. Previously, I only had to give London Transport my money when I actually travelled. Until that point, the money was in my pocket, for me to use as I want.
Now with Oyster cards, I either get charged an extortionate rate for maintaining that privilege (buying higher priced paper tickets), or I have to get credit on my Oyster card that I might not use for a while. My money, given to London Transport, to use as an interest free loan.
As a non-Londoner, I've got maybe ten pounds on a card that's tied up til next time I visit London. Add up the couple of million people who use the tube regularly and consider each of them has a few pounds spare credit on their Oyster cards and pretty soon you'll see that LondonTransport has done something pretty canny: getting 20 million or more GBP interest free loans from the public... and that's not to count the classic big bank win of another big chunk of money that they've effectively got for free from all those unused and lost Oyster cards owned and never to be used again by occasional users / tourists. How may tourists visit London and leave with a pound or two left on their Oyster card and just write it off?
Very canny way of getting additional funding in micropayments from millions of people.
In the subway of Seoul wifi has been available to passengers for years. Three public companies (olleh, offer wifi in the subway and many other public places for a price as low as 8000 krw (about 8 USD) per month.
if your pants fit well, it's not only because of the pants
How about some A/C?
Here in Montreal, we don't even have cell phone signal in the vast majority of the subway network. Hell, I'm still waiting for bathrooms and disabled access, let alone such 'luxuries' as wifi.
Yes, yes, it's not horribly impressive, by any other country's standards, however please consider the fact that it wasn't done because of political and commercial questions. It's politics, not a lack of skills. I am not particularly impressed by Seoul or London's ability to install public Wifi.
With eyes blurry from insomnia the title appeared to be "London Tube Steaks Finally Get Wi-Fi". That woke me up.
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Go to your public transit commissioner, ask them to make sure that Wi-Fi is available on subways/metros... if that fails make sure that Gig-E is run next to any cabling done by phone companies (it's expensive to run cables, running 3 instead of two [GPRS, CDMA, etc] is cheap).
Getting public wi-fi on transit systems is an important milestone in admitting that communications infrastructure should be anonymous.
It's not enough that a person and their husband/wife can speak in private, it's not enough that librarians understand that reading habits and access to information should be free, and that anonymity means more than "harboring pedophiles" we need to encourage this on a broad scale.
Running public internet next to private cellphone coverage is - cheap, obvious, and necessary.
you're doing it wrong.
JohnnyMindCrime: if you paid £14 (which can never be said to round to £20) to get from hammersmith to shepards bush you're crazy. it's a 15 min walk and now westfield is there has plenty of parking in shepherds bush itself.
Fantomas: yep i see and agree with your point... except that you're claim you unused money back at any time. if you wanted to you could go to the station each morning, get a new oystercard for the day and then recoup everything you'd not spent. all the benefits of the paper ticket but cheaper.
fair play that's maybe local knowledge but it's easily gathered if you ask around.
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Isn't providing wireless internet in the tube stations providing a really useful tool for terrorists?
internet triggered explosives anyone?
They're connecting a series of tubes to another series of tubes! This moment will go down in history as one of mankind's greatest achievements.
No doubt they'll pull a Bart and disconnect the wifi service at the first sign of trouble.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I think this is the first time that I actually want to get a ride in the tube, just to try out the new service.