UK Rail Internet Set to Improve

Britain’s busiest rail networks are due to have the fastest internet speeds available by 2019. It is thought that a staggering 70% of train passengers will have access to the faster internet speeds allowing them to have better use of their mobile phones. The speeds are expected to be so vast that passengers will even be able to stream videos onto their mobiles.

With the railway being one of the most popular forms of travel it is important to maintain its services and better those that people want and need. This will ensure that people continue to use the railway and in return receive an exceptional service. At the moment mobile phone communications on the railway are not that good causing people to lose connection and have no signal at all. It is for these reasons why the connections must be improved to keep passengers happy.

Network Rail is currently undergoing a £1.9bn digital communication improvement programme. This will improve both the fixed line and mobile infrastructure of the rail network. Once the fibre optic network is installed it is hoped that it will be able to handle up to 192,000 gigabits per second of data. It is estimated that the installation will be completed by June 2014.

The reason for people having such limited data access now is down to the train operating companies only providing 2.5 megabits of data per vehicle. This then has to be shared out amongst the passengers on the train leaving little room for video streaming. This is why the companies block services such as iPlayer, Netflix and Love Film. With the new upgrade however each vehicle should be able to receive at least 50 megabits of data allowing the current policy to change so that people have access to the services they want to reach.

The upgrades however will of course cost the likes of Network Rail, mobile phone operators and train operating companies. How much is yet to be decided as is the cost of how much the passengers on board the train would be charged for using the service. One thing is for sure though that passengers will be happier and benefit from the changes that are to be made.

Author Bio:
Aidan is a keen writer who is extremely interested in internet and technology. He currently writes on behalf of Lush Dialup, providers of cheap dialup internet.