Virgin Trains UK Trials 5G Fuelled Wi-Fi on West Coast Mainline

Virgin Trains has worked with mobile operator Vodafone UK and McLaren Applied to trial a new ultrafast 5G powered onboard WiFi network for commuters travelling via their trains on the West Coast Mainline route (i.e. the trial took place between London Euston, Birmingham New Street and Manchester Piccadilly).

Apparently the initial trial took place last month, although a second trial is planned to begin from this Sunday (8th December 2019) when the West Coast Mainline franchise switches over to become Avanti West Coast.

Commuters on one of these trains are thus being told to expect “super-fast internet” that is “up to ten times faster” than what they’d normally expect to receive, which doesn’t tell us much since onboard WiFi tends to be both highly variable and often quite unreliable.

John Sullivan, CIO at Virgin Trains, said:

“Virgin Trains has always aimed to deliver the best customer experience by offering our passengers the latest in technological innovation. Over the course of our 22-year tenure, we have launched industry firsts including Amazon Alexa ticket booking, disruption management, Automatic Delay Repay and BEAM – our on-board entertainment streaming service.

We may be coming to the end of our time running the West Coast Mainline but Virgin Trains is excited to be playing an important part in the early stages of this 5G project, which is another example of how we have led the way in digital innovation within the rail industry.”

Vodafone has of course already conducted 5G trials at Birmingham New Street station (here) and so we’re not surprised to see them working with Virgin Trains. The Government has long planned to make “uninterrupted” WiFi and Mobile (5G) broadband speeds of up to 1Gbps (Gigabits per second) available on-board all UK mainline train routes by 2025, albeit not without the odd hiccup (here).