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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.”'"
How were they paid?
I'm guessing they get to plaster their name all of the place. Connect to the network and your browser will be redirected to a page with Virgin's logo, where you have to click a button indicating that you agree to the TOS.
It is going to be free under the Olympics, but afterward you'll have to be a Virgin customer or pay £££.
While with an Oyster card it would've been £8 in total. Traveling on the underground with paper tickets seems like a bad idea..
That's because you bought paper tickets which are priced artificially high at £4.30 each way to encourage people to use the oyster card. If you used the oyster (contactless payment) card instead it would have costed £1.50 (peak) or £1.40 (off-peak) for zone 3 only travel. TFL (Transport for London) may be expensive, but it isn't that expensive.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
It's a loss leader for Virgin to get their kit in there, and then they will run it after the Olympics in the same manner as BT run their existing nationwide OpenZone wifi network - some mobile networks users get access as part of their contracts, everyone else has to pay for access.
It's not rocket science.
Its a myth:
http://www.danielbowen.com/2012/05/07/myki-90-day-expiry/
Err, you don't get mobile phone reception in the London Underground either (well, you do in the overground parts, obviously).
Or you could take the card to a ticket office and exchange it for the remaining credit plus your deposit. I know someone who visits London every couple of months and does this every time.
...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...
Yes, it says you haven't got a clue how to travel in London.
* Firstly, why not park at Westfield?
* Secondly, why not take a taxi? That would be about the same price that you paid
* Oyster would be £6 return for the two of you, even if you bought 2 new oyster cards in Hammersmith, and loaded each with £3, that would only be £12, and you can always return the cards later
Single cash fares are deliberately expensive because it costs a lot to maintain the infrastructure that less than 1% of journeys are made with.