Trains: Wifi Provision for Passengers

Lord Swire Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I will revert to where I started on this. No decisions have been taken. As part of the business planning process, we have asked the train operating companies to look again at the services provided and to come up with a business case which sets out the benefits to passengers and the costs of providing that service. However, usage of wifi on trains is actually quite low. It is available from all train operating companies but is not available on all trains.

[Lord Swire (Con)]

One of the reasons that wifi use on trains is perhaps a little low, as my noble friend says, is because it is so hit and miss. I have been involved in an energetic correspondence with Mr Mark Hopwood, the managing director of GWR. I say energetic. It is energetic on my part, but less energetic perhaps on his; an acknowledgement would be a start and an answer even better. The truth is that we have a terrible problem in this country with productivity, and train time is dead time. You can get wifi on a plane and on a boat; surely you should be able to get reliable wifi on trains. If the problem is with Network Rail, then we really need to look at the relationship we have with the train operators, Network Rail and the whole infrastructure.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The wifi on trains usually runs off the same 4G and 5G system that my noble friend will have on his smartphone, so sometimes there can be reliability issues. It also depends on how many people are using the wifi on the train. It is there for email and other low data usage requirements. It is not really there for streaming, but I accept that sometimes the bandwidth can be a little challenging.