East Coast Wi-fi Fail

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Oh dear, as I feared... The improved service isn't improved very much, and now we have to pay for it.
This blog post can be read at 5tth.blogspot.com

As I mentioned on an earlier blog posting East Coast Trains are about to introduce, and indeed have introduced charging for their on-board wi-fi.

I'm sitting on board one of their stationary trains and I've just had a go with their new 3G/HSPA chargeable wi-fi and it's not very good. It's marginally quicker than what went before, but there aren't many people on board, so pretty low contention ratio.

I'm now using my 3G dongle which is much better. Would I pay £4.95 for an hour's use? Er, no when I can get something much better for £5 a month.

I suppose the bottom line is `How many people will pay?' given that many nowadays have 3G dongles and a lot can be done with a Blackberry or i-Phone.

It'll be interesting to see how long before it's switched off.