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Virgin’s London Tube Wi-Fi network is pretty useful, I have to admit, but the free ride is now over. From today, Virgin will start charging you for access unless you happen to be on EE, Vodafone or Virgin. It’s not that expensive, but will you actually pay for it now?
Virgin’s asking £2 a day, £5 per week, or £15 a month for access to its underground station-only Wi-Fi network, which isn’t horrendous, I guess. The biggest issue, at least for me, is that it’s only available in stations, which is great if you get stuck in one because of a signal failure or something, but it’s not that useful for downloading stuff. Sure, a quick trip into the station is enough to send and receive email, but it’s pretty useless when you’re trying to download a newspaper, or TV show on your phone or tablet.
For the next month, Virgin’s pushing a promo to try and get you hooked — if you sign up in February for a month you’ll get three months service for the price of one. So, will you fork out the £15 a month for your London commute, if you have to that is, or are those momentary blips of underground internet just not worth it?
Image credit: Tube from Shutterstock
It'll Cost £15 to Use Virgin Media's Underground Wi-Fi For a Month in 2013
Suddenly, being on Vodafone makes a whole lotta sense
Apart from the contract rapeage that is….
Hey, my phone company has Yoda for a mascot. Who do you have, hmmmm?
Yeah yeah, I have Orville, so SUCK IT!
Yoda would totally take Orville in a fight, dude.
Yeah, but at least Orville doesn’t take orders from the Dark Lord Lucas…
Vodafone has lightsabers. You lose.
Doesn’t Virgin have the that slight effeminate Scottish bloke who used to be the Doctor?
So techinically, you both lose?
So Time Lord beat green-stuffed-annoyed-bird/wrinkly-turd-looking-creature?
Incidentally, “Yoda” has never been mentioned in any of their adverts. Wasn’t that an article here???
Oh cmon, Yoda could definitely take a Time Lord. The Force + bad syntax > some poxy time machine.
Tom Baker would WHOOOPPP his crinkly arse!!!
Mind you, I saw Colin Baker on TV the other day… Holy Moly… The 27 years since he played the Doctor have certainly been tasty…
I reckon he’d eat Yoda and the green duck without pausing for breath!
No way. The only Doctor able to touch old Yodles would by Sylvester McCoy. *Subtely tries to de-rail fanboy argument*
Yoda vs Orville fanboys. *grabs popcorn*
I think it needs to cover the whole Network, every station and tunnel, THEN it would be worth even £10 a month.. pretty good for all them delays..
No for two reasons:
1. I have virgin media so it’s free for me
2. I never go on the underground
Yeah, that’s a no from me. Well, for the time being. Maybe if it makes it actually along the tunnels.
I concur. Although I am on VM so it’s free for me, it’s still largely pointless as you whiz pass the stations between stops to make it usable.
It’s useful for receiving emails in the periods when you’re actually in the station but actually using it is always a comedy. Pull into station… get a few seconds to use the net by the time it connects… lose connection again.
Plus it does that annoying thing where the first URL you visit is redirected to a Virgin placeholder page.
It’s a rip off considering one would not spent more than 3 hours a day(unless you are stuck) on tube!
With tubes arriving every minute or two I’m sure I can wait until i come out of the underground again.
Its not exactly much use as the stops are so short and by the time you’ve connected every-time you’re in a station you’re not going to have much time to use it
This has been the only time I’ve actually been happy to be on EE. Received my access code just the other day.
For those who doubt, it is pretty useful as you pick up and send email and documents quite easily in the few moments you have at each stop. As for news and browsing its always tabs, tabs, tabs!
Granted I am biased, spending about half an hour each way on the daily commute.
I’m glad it’s being charged for now. It made my iPod Touch crash 90% of the times it tried connecting, so for my daily commute I would have to turn off the WiFi. Now I can’t connect I can listen to music (and ignore all other commuters) uninterrupted!
£15 a month is the same amount I pay for my phone contract. To pay that much for a service most people would use for less than 5 minutes a day /is/ horrendous. Priced like that I can only imagine they don’t really care about PAYG as a revenue stream and are trying to get the other networks to sign up.
Agreed, I don’t know why Sam thinks that isn’t horrendous, it’s insane. You’d have to live in the tube for it to be worth it.
You might wait a few minutes for a train, but once your on it the trains stop at stations for 20 seconds each, basically fucking unusable, its more annoying waiting for the connection to establish and everything.
As you say it’s as much as a contract – insane, nobody would be able to use it that much.