St Pancras HS1 Train Station Covered by “Ten Times Faster” FREE WiFi

Commuters passing through St Pancras railway station, which is part of the 108-kilometre long High Speed 1 route (Channel Tunnel Rail Link), can now get online thanks to the launch of a new free WiFi wireless Internet service that’s claimed to be “ten times faster than the average home or office broadband“. But unfortunately there’s a catch.

The service, which is being rolled out by WiFi Metropolis under a two phase plan that should complete in September 2014, is free for the first 20 minutes of service and after that you’ll be forced to watch a 20 second advert before it continues to let you browse.

Curiously the official website states that the network’s SSID is “St Pancras International WiFi“, while the PR suggests that it’s actually called merely “St Pancras WiFi“, which should make life interesting for hackers that want to setup a fake Hotspot by abusing the confusion.

Once complete the new network will be able to host as many as 7,000 people “all streaming a HD movie at the same time“.