South Western Railways Deploy 5G to Fuel Superfast Onboard WiFi
The South Western Railway and telecoms firm Evo-rail (FirstGroup) recently announced the people travelling on a 70km long stretch of their Main Line into London – between Basingstoke and Earlsfield – would be the first to benefit from the rollout of new rail-side 5G poles (masts) that will be used to deliver “superfast” onboard WiFi.
At present, we think it’s fair to say that SWR’s onboard Wi-Fi is not exactly the fastest or most dependable of rail-focused internet connectivity services (speaking from direct experience), but the operator is aware of that and has been busy developing a solution to improve the situation.
The work recently culminated in a pilot of their new “rail-5G” solution (i.e. special track-side 5G mobile / radio pole masts that are used to supply data capacity for onboard WiFi), which took place on SWR’s Island Line on the Isle of Wight and is said to have been able to “consistently deliver” broadband speeds (throughput) of 1Gbps to a moving train (i.e. shared capacity for commuters and the train operator).
The technology is now being rolled out to other parts of the SWR network, starting with part of their Main Line run between Weymouth in Dorset and London Waterloo. SWR’s specific focus is the 70km long stretch between Basingstoke and Earlsfield (credits to Miles for spotting this).
Christian Neill, SWR’s Customer Experience Director, said:
“South Western Railway is committed to providing a modern customer experience for the digital age and rolling out new superfast internet, at 50 times the current average speeds, is an integral part of our plan to do that.
Following a successful pilot on Isle of Wight’s Island Line, we are excited to deliver this industry-leading standard of internet connectivity for our customers, which will provide superfast and reliable Wi-Fi for 70km of railway between Basingstoke and Earlsfield.”
Simon Holmes, Managing Director of evo-rail, said:
“Improving services for passengers through superfast and reliable connectivity – especially on-board Wi-Fi services – will be the keystone in rail becoming the transport mode of choice.
Our solution can dramatically improve connectivity on passenger trains and the technology allows passengers to have constant, uninterrupted and consistent internet 50 times the average speed of today’s mobile connection.
We are very excited for this milestone of our project with South Western Railway and Network Rail and look forward to bringing the solution to customers travelling between Earlsfield and Basingstoke.”
The project, which is also supported by Network Rail, claims it will deliver “near perfect, consistent coverage” along the route and completion of the deployment is expected during early 2023. But what’s not clear is how long we’ll have to wait before SWR extends this to the rest of their network. But we should point out that using 5G to deliver capacity to moving trains is not a new idea.
Lest we forget that, back in December 2017, the UK Government pledged 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. Since then, we’ve rarely seen this mentioned anywhere, and the Government has not issued any solid progress updates in a long time.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Another excuse to jack up the already criminal prices. Rail is an expensive failure in this country
This is such a stupid idea.
It’s not 5G, your phone cannot use it. Only the Wi-Fi system on board the train can.
Why don’t they instead of building these sites go with what TfL has done and make them MNO neutral and improve cell coverage? It is utterly woeful on this line and nobody seems to care.
The solution implemented doesn’t require the customer to have a 5G capable phone (and also supports laptops), and I suspect the equipment bolted onto the train (with an exterior antenna, presumably) is likely to be able to maintain more reliable connectivity than a 5G phone in the train, even if there was a new cloud of (more complex) 5G base stations lineside The key is that it should not become an extra cost item (as it is on airplanes, sometimes with different bandwidth tiers).
Tube is a different use case/customer experience requirement, so it is more appropriate (and more practical) to have a 5G MNO solution with customer phones
I would be interested to know which frequency band this uses (presumably not the millimetric bands), and the transmitter power lineside (presumably fairly low, just enough to cover the train line, especially in cuttings)
@MilesT proper MNO coverage could be used for Wi-Fi too. That’s what they’re doing on the Brighton Mainline.
This is just a terrible solution, they should be implementing a host-neutral MNOs can use too. We are going to be stuck with crap signal on phones on this line, I just know it.
I remember trialling Vodafone 3G dongles travelling to and from work along that line.
It was amazing it worked consistently
Last week my sky mobile reception kept dropping out whilst streaming the radio.
My ID mobile (mvno on 3) was far better all the way to Waterloo with only occasional drops for a second or 2.
Reception in London is just horrendous these days, strong signal but very low throughput.
I don’t have 5G but will be interesting to see if it improves connectivity as the numbers of users ramp up which is 1 of its stated benefits.
The only way to get consistent speeds in London is to use EE. They are expensive, but I rarely see speeds under 50Mbps with their 4G.
Three 4G is terrible, but their 5G (available almost everywhere, at least outdoors) competes with EE’s 4G and you’ll see very high speeds (~800Mbps) when near a cell tower (better than EE).
Vodafone and O2 are a disappointment to be honest. What saves O2 is their “small cells” spread all over the city. Vodafone 4G went downhill over the past ~2 years and they don’t have the small cells O2 have. Both seem to be behind EE and Three in terms of 5G coverage too.
@Nelson
EE & 3 share cell infrastructure so would explain why those 2 both have good signal and data rates
O2 & VodaFone share cell sites so should have vaguely similar performance.
I don’t have 5G, no coverage where I live in the burbs.
Having the WiFi working would be a good start, too many trains you can’t even connect to the SSID or it falls at the captive portal screen (which in itself is as pointless as an EU cookie notice)
It will be interesting what the actual individual speeds on this new WiFi system will be, as the 1Gbps frequently mentioned is only shared capacity.
Also it will be interesting if they actually allow you to stream video content, do video calls and game on their new system.
Also the website for Evo rail 5G, implies that they might charge you for data after you use you allocated allowance (at full speed), I certainly hope they don’t resort to that old tactic!
I travel on SWR very frequently and will say that in London at least their WiFi speeds are currently the best in the county, with frequently 9+Mbps down and about 7 up.
Also SWR don’t throttle speeds after a certain data allowance, unlike GWR who significantly reduce speeds after using about 30MB, which basically gives you a couple of minutes on social media, very frustrating!
It would be nice if you could actually work / do stuff on the internet on the trains. The current systems in place tend to give very poor speeds like 1 or 2 megabit and that’s if it even works at all. I would have thought something like the Starlink for RVs would be a better solution / give a more reliable connection.
Still it’s nice to see improvements on the trains WiFi.
I was on an EMR train the other day, advertised free WiFi on all the posters.
I connected it and on the splash screen it showed a usage meter of 100MB. 100MB? I could use that in a few minutes on a decent connection.
Needless to say, I disconnected back to my unlimited Vodafone mobile data plan rather quickly.
Train WiFi on all operators is pretty awful across the board. Generally better to just stick to your mobile plan. Especially as train WiFi often blocks 2022 basic usage like Instagram or YouTube because it being ‘too high bandwidth’. Pathetic!
So if you have an android based device, it has a ‘randomise MAC address’ option. Simply forget the WiFi network, re-add it, and boom an extra 100MB. You can do this indefinately. Of course that solution sucks, but if you need it, it’s an option.
I would love to have a decent connection that I can use to work on university assignments or read on line whilst on the hour long journey.
It would also be nice to have my phone load apps so when I get messages from my family I can reply.