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Had your fill of the free Tube Wi-Fi yet? If not you better get down there, pronto. Virgin’s always said it’ll only be free until the end of the “summer of sport”, which has kind of been and gone now. In fact, come October, things are going to change.
Talking to ZDNet, Virgin said that it’d be announcing plans for its Tube Wi-Fi network “after September”. It’s likely that it’ll go Virgin subscriber-only, or available via a monthly, weekly or maybe even daily subscription.
I have to say, I’ve used and abused the free Tube Wi-Fi; I found it a hell of a lot more useful than I thought I would, considering it’s just in the stations. But, I doubt I’d pay much for it, if anything at all. Still, Virgin subscribers will probably get it thrown in with their packages for free, so you lot are quids-in. [ZDNet]
Image credit: Tube from Shutterstock
It is quite handy for syncing an app or loading a web page which you can then read while the train is in the tunnel and then grab the next bit at the next station. The only pain is having to go through the welcome screen each time which uses up valuable internet time whilst in a station.
Not managed to be in and around London long enough to try it.
Must be possible to bypass the welcome screen somehow….
It may be because I can’t stand Richard Bransons stupid smug face, or it may be because they only put it at one of the 4 stations I frequent and managed to not put it at the only one of those stations where you can’t get 3G signal, I just don’t know, but I hardly used it.
“It may be because I can’t stand Richard Branson’s stupid smug face”
You’re just jealous that he can run faster than you
It was a crock of shit in fairness, despite it’s free-ness.
Unless you’re the sort of guy who likes going down the escalator to download porn while the smelly travellers hop on and off, theres not a lot you can do in the minute and a half it takes a train to arrive.
It wasn’t even in every tube station either…tssk
I loved it! I used it every single day. Very handy while waiting for your train on the platform or even when your train is held up mid-station. Managed to sync my e-mails, comfortably continue a game of Words with Friends, browse Facebook & Twitter, and do pretty much everything I like to do on the go. It was brilliant and I for one will miss the hell out of it.
As someone who is not often in London I have only used it once but was impressed by the speed at which I was able to upload a picture/comment to g+.
I wonder which flavour of Virgin subscribers it’ll be free for (if any)…broadband or just mobile?
I personally found it really useful as it allowed me to send and recieve iMessages over the wifi and write emails from my work account pretending to be at my desk when i running beyond fashionably late!
Can’t say I tried to do much internet browsing on it though…you’d need to be pretty nimble fingered to get much typed in at the station stops…
I would be willing to pay if there was wifi inside the trains themselves. Having to pay for only station access is just annoying.
When at the Olympics (Went to see wrestling at ExCEL!) I didn’t get the time to use the Virgin Tube Wifi once, all the trains were so well-timed & efficient I was never on a platform for long enough to even bring up the login screen. And even if it was available on the trains, it was typically crowded particularly on the way back so I couldn’t have used it there either! Oh well, maybe I’ll use it next time I visit as a Virgin customer…
As someone who actually works at a tube station I found it excellent. I’ve been dying to know who much a monthly tarrif would be and if it was around £5 I would go for it.
Very fast. The welcome screen got abit annoying but when you were on it it did give you a tfl twitter feed at the bottom telling you service updates and any problems with step free stations which would have helped alot of people.
Why is everyone willing to pay extra for this? Don’t we pay enough already? Wifi in the subway system is becoming a general standard around the world — not for extra cost, but as part of the government infrastructure. Surely it is in the best interest of the economy and the treasury to expand access to communications and commerce, not allow it to be carved out for limited use and closed off to the rest of the population.