Posted: 30th Nov, 2010 By: MarkJ
Transport provider
National Express East Anglia (NXEA) has announced that trains travelling on its
Norwich to London UK Intercity services will, from
early 2011, benefit from a new onboard wireless ( Wi-Fi ) broadband internet access service.
The announcement is part of National Expresses wider project to deploy Wi-Fi across their fleet of Intercity trains, which is now nearing completion. The work also makes use of a
£346,000 grant from the
East of England Development Agency (EEDA),
Norfolk County Council and
Suffolk County Council.
Andrew Chivers, Managing Director of NXEA, commented:
"The project to install wi-fi on our Intercity trains on the Norwich to London mainline is progressing well in readiness for the full introduction of the service early in the New Year. I would particularly like to thank EEDA and Norfolk and Suffolk County Councils for their funding support towards the upgrade.
It illustrates our ongoing commitment to continue to invest in improving train services for our customers in the region as part of our Service Improvement Plan which is centred on providing extra seats on train services into London in the December 2010 and 2011 timetable changes."
Graham Plant, a Norfolk County Council Cabinet member, said:
"Wi-fi on all Norwich to London Intercity trains will be a boon for businesses. The train journey to and from Norwich will be transformed from travel time to valuable office time, and to know that it will be available on every Intercity train will be particularly pleasing for business travellers."
The "
customer-focused" programme certainly isn't cheap and involves
operating costs of over £200k a year, which NXEA suggests would have made the service unaffordable had it not been able to secure additional public funding.
NXEA claims that business travellers and leisure users now increasingly see Wi-Fi internet access as a key component of modern intercity-style rail service. Pricing remains unclear, although
First Class travellers usually gain
FREE access. Standard fare commuters can opt for a one-time payment (£2.95 per journey) or a monthly subscription of £19 per month.
We note that the
MyTrainTicket website also offers a MAP of Train routs with Wi-Fi support and costs, although it's clearly been designed for people with X-Ray eyes because most humans would have difficult reading blurry text that is just 5 or 6 pixels high. Thankfully we have just been sent a high-resolution version and will upload that in the next item.