After pushing Irish Rail for nearly two years there is finally some result; Airappz has invited to run a 6 month public wifi trail on the Dublin to Cork route!
The trail installation will be for a complete trainset for the duration of the trail. After these 6 months Irish Rail will (together with Airappz) evaluate the usage & performance data and based on this they will decide whether or not to put the provision of a fleet-wide wifi service out to public tender.
The invitation by Irish Rail was actually made around the middle of 2009 but the scope of the project has only recently been agreed.
As announced in 2008 Airappz intends to make the actual wifi access free off charge. Our purpose designed captive portal will display location based advertising and together with relavent location based services this will create sufficient revenue for us to not have to charge for the actual access.
Unlike other providers Airappz has consistently advocated free wifi access and has pioneered their own solution to enable this.
Airappz to trial onboard wifi with Irish Rail | Ken McGuire
January 4th, 2010 4:10 pm
[...] FIRST THEY upgraded the trains. Then there was the new seats and the power points (offset possibly by the increase in food and ticket prices for the trains themselves). Now it looks like Irish Rail users on the Dublin – Cork – Dublin service will be able to available of wireless internet access, free of charge, courtesy of Irish Rail and Airappz. [...]
Derry O Donnell
January 4th, 2010 4:25 pm
I can’t believe it took them so long. Surely the availability of free wifi would help increase the number of people taking the train. Whether it’s students or business travelers or whoever, being able to access the internet on smart phones, laptops etc. should greatly enhance the appeal of traveling by train. If Ireland is trying to grow a Smart Economy then surely free and open wifi on all major train routes should be integral to that.
Brendan Lally
January 4th, 2010 4:39 pm
Evert,
I guess moral of the story is perseverance.
Good luck with trials. What ‘backhaul’ options do u have?
Donal
January 4th, 2010 9:02 pm
Good luck with this, it’s long overdue. Two things though: when is it starting; and, is it on all trains on the Cork-Dublin route? I’m on the train at least once a month and it would be very handy.
Evert
January 4th, 2010 9:10 pm
@Donal
I can’t give you a fixed date at the moment but it should be up and running within the next few months. As with this type of project there is a mountain of paperwork to complete before we are actually allowed to install the first piece of equipment on the train.
As for what trains; we are installing a complete trainset and as there are another 3-4 providers running trails I would say that most Cork-Dublin trains will be covered.