Great Western Railway Pilots Hybrid Network to Boost Onboard Wi-Fi
The Great Western Railway (GWR), which operates most train services across the Great Western Main Line (GWML) – the rail line in England that runs between London Paddington and Bristol Temple Meads, has joined with Peninsula Transport, Network Rail and Motion Applied to pilot faster on-board broadband (WiFi) using “technology from the world of Formula 1“.
At present the technical details of the project remain very limited and it’s unclear exactly which aspect of it involves technology that is specific to “Formula 1“, but we believe it may be the use of 5G Edge Active Antennas. Something similar was used in F1, although it’s been used plenty of times elsewhere too.
In short, the new setup involves a hybrid of trackside 5G mobile infrastructure on the ground and ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO); it’s not stated if they’re using Starlink or OneWeb (Eutelsat) for this. This is an approach that has also been used on other trains before.
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The official GWR website mentions that this is being piloted (started mid-November) for 60 days on a single 9-car Intercity Express Train (look out for train 802101 on their network, aka – “Nancy Astor CH“). The effort looks as if it could be part of, or may complement, the Government’s new Project Reach, which reflects a public-private partnership that aims to deploy “ultra fast fibre optic cable” (via Neos Networks) across 1,000km of major rail lines to help “eliminate mobile signal blackspots” in tunnels on “key rail routes” up and down the country (possibly extending to 5,000km in the future).
The Government’s recently published 10 Year Industrial Strategy did similarly pledge £41m to help introduce Low Earth Orbit (LEO) broadband satellite connectivity “on all mainline trains” in order to help tackle the above issue.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Good news, albeit a little on the late side. I remember the first time I used super-fast mobile connectivity on a train, and it was impressive. That was back in 2012, in Malaysia (on the airport express train). Here in 2025 in olde worlde Britain, it’s never even worth connecting to train Wi-Fi, as it’s usually so slow that it feels like you’re back on GPRS, if it works at all. Hopefully this is the beginning of actually resolving this…
Well needed, there are a lot of bad patches on the line from Bath to Paddington – I always know i’m coming into Didcot as all network connectively drops completely.
It’s embarrassing how these companies do everything they can to balloon costs rather than become more efficient with cheaper costs and ticket prices
The Shinkansen makes it seem like every UK operator is run by toddlers with no idea what they are doing. It’s literally superior in every single aspect that one can think about
It’s inferior in that it will do a very bad job of getting me from Bristol to London.
High prices aren’t about inefficiency, they are a demand regulation tool. There aren’t enough seats to meet demand and so the price rises until demand and availability match. Basic price elasticity.
For those with a RealTimeTrains+ subscription: https://www.realtimetrains.co.uk/search/handler?qsearch=802101&type=detailed (if you don’t have a subscription then it seems like it redirects you to the _current_ train working, which is somewhat useful!)
I would like to know who at GWR made the decision to fit unit 802 101 with this technology.
The unintended consequence is that 802 101’s unit marking is right next to the big “WiFi” branding now. And it hurts to look at, because I read it like WiFi 802 101. It’s 802.11. I can’t unsee it. It hurts. I’m going to bed now.