London Mayor Boris grilled on Virgin's Underground penetration Virgin Media's London Underground wireless monopoly will last five years, but that's all right 'cos it didn't cost Transport for London a penny and other companies were allowed to bid. Responding to questions from Mayorwatch, TfL explained that Virgin Media is paying to provide public Wi-Fi over infrastructure that was being …
"Virgin will be allowed to make use of "public information channels" to publicise its service"
Oh, great. I can just hear the tannoy announcements now.
"There is a good service operating on all London Underground lines. Why not check whether this is actually true by visiting www.tfl.gov.uk using our free* Virgin Media Wifi service! Termsandconditionsapplyserviceisonlyfreetoexistingcustomersproductmaycontainnuts."
"Virgin Media will get some promotion of the service, as the London Underground will be "allowing access to the same public information channels used for other service improvement" but exactly what that means isn't clear."
Perhaps along the lines, your webpage is running late and will be with your browser in 3 minutes time.
Either way you look at it. It is one heck of a scoop for Virgin and they should do will in term of sales of the back of this venture. Me personaly just think that this will lead to a increase in pick-pockets, what will all the people stationary, with both hand out infront handcuffed to there mobile device and there focus limited to a small area a few inch's square. Pickpockets would never take advantage of that now would they. Still it could lead to less mobile phone thefts.
How many peoplw will do VOIP with this, and no they could try and block it but its the internets, things always get thru.
Just read this;
"Virgin Media can't mention the Olympics, it isn't a sponsor so can't even refer to the fact that the free Wi-Fi will last until the end of the 2012 Games"
Seriously, they can't even mention the Olympics? Everyone else seems to be doing it, including the council near Holborn who have somehow managed to build a "throw your rubbish in the bin" campaign around the Olympics (well, they have a gymnast posing while dropping something in a bin, anyway).
Try reading the official rules, terms and conditions on the London 2012 website and you'll see the true extent of the lunacy. Specific new *laws* put in place in the UK to give over rights and create "new" offences relating to the use of the London 2012 marks (logos and shit), general branding and words.
Not sure I agree with the "most of the time in a tunnel will make it useless" stance.
When services are running OK (yea, I know..) you actualy spend a fair bit of time in stations waiting for people to alight etc. Certainly enough time to refresh my emails, RSS and twitter feeds, and for those apps that do provide service running info to update their data.
Yea, if you're expecting to have a great interactive browsing session, or listen to Spotify, you'll be dissapointed, but the service isn't aimed at that.
As a Virgin Media customer, I'm quite pleased this'll be included in my "bundle" and will certainly improve my Smartphone experience whilst in and around London.
I wouldn't expect much! Probably a Cisco wi-fi box backed onto a crappy DSL line and only reachable within the middle 5 metres of the platform...
Actually, would be handy to catch mainline train updates before I zoom through the tubes. Surprising how the shit can hit the fan within 10 minutes on some of the national rail lines.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
