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The Government has announced that South Western Railway (SWR) has launched a new one-year trial to deliver faster onboard WiFi (wireless broadband) for people travelling on journeys between London Waterloo, Portsmouth Harbour and Weymouth in England. The effort should complement recent work to deploy a new track-side fibre and 5G mast network (here).
The trial also means that the now publicly-owned train and rail operator can finally deliver around 97% WiFi service coverage through the New Forest, which is often one of the network’s most challenging rural “not spot” areas for onboard internet connectivity (roughly 20 minutes of the journey in this area would normally be left without usable WiFi).
As with some of the other satellite-based data backhaul solutions we’ve seen on other UK trains, the new trial – taking place on a Class 444 train – is being powered by Starlink’s mega-constellation of ultrafast broadband satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO).
At present this is just being deployed on a single train, but if successful the technology could be rolled out across other trains in the SWR fleet and may thus “encourage other publicly-owned operators to do the same“.
Rail Minister, Lord Peter Hendy, said:
“A good wifi signal can transform a journey and SWR’s wifi trial is a game changer for passengers.
With Christmas and New Year celebrations just around the corner, passengers travelling for the holidays can enjoy their journeys knowing they’ll stay connected – whether that’s to watch their favourite festive films, do last-minute shopping or catch up with loved ones at this special time of year.
This is exactly the kind of improvement rail operators under public ownership can deliver to put passengers first and make rail travel enjoyable for all.”
Peter Williams, SWR’s Customer and Commercial Director, said:
“We know how important reliable wifi is to our customers – it supports productivity, keeps people connected and entertained and makes rail an even more attractive and sustainable way to travel.
By bringing satellite technology to our trains, we’re covering some of the hardest-to-reach parts of the network and showing that seamless connectivity is possible wherever you travel. This is another big step towards improving the onboard experience for our customers and we are excited to see how it can benefit more routes across our network in future.”
Obviously, satellite solutions don’t have perfect coverage, particularly when it comes to some of the long stretches of tunnels on SWR’s line, which can temporarily break connectivity. But that’s where the ongoing efforts to improve track-side 5G and fibre upgrades could eventually help to fill the gaps.
In addition, the government are also running Project Reach, which reflects a public-private partnership that will deploy “ultra fast fibre optic cable” across 1,000 kilometres of major rail lines to help “eliminate mobile signal blackspots” in tunnels on “key rail routes” up and down the country (this could potentially be expanded to 5,000km in the future).
The multi-year project’s first installation of mobile infrastructure is expected to begin in 2026 and be fully rolled out by 2028, although it’s initially only focused on the East Coast Main Line, parts of the West Coast Main Line and the Great Western Main Line.