South West Trains’ stupid Wi-Fi excuse
I travelled from Wareham to London last week on South West Trains and splashed out on a first-class ticket so I could work (hey, I can't work in standard class as there are a different type of people there.)
South West trains: no Wi-Fi
Anyway, leaving aside the fact that there weren't any tables and I had to pay for the sodding drinks (so what was the point of first class exactly?), there wasn't any Wi-Fi.
How can this be possible? According to the train company:
We do not have any plans to provide Wi-Fi on board our trains and it is unlikely that we will do so in the future.
The increasing use of BlackBerrys and iPhones amongst our customers seems to be the most popular form of on-board communication.
Well of course it's the most popular form of on-board communication. It's the ONLY one you idiots, so it has to be the most popular. The only other possible ones are Wi-Fi, payphones and carrier pigeons and you don't offer them.
Also, mobile-phone coverage on the route is awful, so most of the time you can't get a signal long enough to do anything useful.
Instead of making stupid assumptions based on what people have to do in the absence of any other choice, how about finding out what your customers want and offering it to them?
I would happily pay for wifi on this service. mobile service is awful. i can understand why they can't be bothered to install all the hardware. what's the alternative? drive!
My trip from Brockenhurst to Waterloo makes for 15 hours a week spent on the train - annually that's 750 hours or a full month every year! - season ticket is £5000 - these hours are not unusual for a huge amount of SW train customers - wifi or a 3G booster would change everything - I wish SW trains would be proactive about this and not rely on their monopoly - Andy