A bus trip with free wi-fi

Seen last week in Oxford: certainly it's a European (and probably a world) first. The new OxfordTube buses shuttling 24/7 between Oxford and various London locations are equipped with free Internet wi-fi access, and power plugs. OxfordTube, which is controlled by transport group Stagecoach, has renewed its fleet of 25 large buses a couple of years ago. It fitted them late last year with wi-fi and launched an Internet-on-board trial using broadband cellular links and technology from UK firm Moovera. During the three-months test period, the company says, they logged 16'000 online sessions lasting on average 42 minutes, which prompted them to make the service permanent in early February. The same system is used by the company to track the buses' whereabouts, giving it a real-time, at-a-glance view of its fleet.

UPDATE - As Sami points out in the comments, Helsinki City Transport in Finland started in January a free wi-fi trial on several buses and trams. The system is also intended to "speed up public transport by giving vehicles linked to the system priority in traffic lights when needed".

UPDATE - Meanwhile, journalist Peter Wolf tells me that Swiss firm Hesscar has started testing Internet access in one of their buses already half a year ago (picture left). They use a different approach though: a Swisscom Unlimited wireless card (which uses the GPRS, UMTS or EDGE networks) is installed in a router in the trunk of the bus, and ethernet cables connect it to two of the firm's own laptops on board (passengers can connect their laptops, too).

UPDATE - According to Engadget some bus routes in the San Francisco Bay Area served by AC Transit, one of the transit authorities in the region, will also feature onboard wi-fi.

Anyone knows of other cities where buses have wi-fi?

Comments

[Sami]

I'm not so sure about it being a European first; we in Helsinki have also had free WLAN connections in a number of buses & trams for some time now. See e.g. http://newsroom.finland.fi/stt/showarticle.asp?intNWSAID=14791&group=General

Here's hoping they expand the service to cover the whole network.

[Johan]

I happen to use the Oxford Tube bus route to London quite frequently and I can tell you that the WiFi doesn't work very well. It is extremely slow which makes websurfing a bit of an agonizing event :)

I guess they use the GSM mobile network to connect to the internet. If they would be using 3G it should be a bit less slow I suppose.

[Laurent]

Les employés de Google qui font la navette entre San Francisco et Mountain View ont des navettes gratuites payées par Google, et qui ont le wifi depuis bien longtemps (en tous cas début 2006 quand j'y étais)

[Kolin]

The bus from reading train station to thames valley business park has wifi on board.

Its provided by Moovera, just like the ones in oxford, and it seems to work quite well.