Irish Rail now charging for Wi-Fi
 

No mention of method of purchase or billing.

http://irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

Its part two of the trial, won't be popular. But there needs to be a business case to pay for the wifi.

There is a half way house, where a certain level of free time will be granted and beyond that it will be charged for. But that a discussion for later

"Free" WiFi, if it attracts extra customers (estecially Premium or 1st Class), does not need an explicit user charge to justify it. It's a bit like a mirror-image of the tha car-parking charges where the net revenue to IE could well be negative if you take the change in customer numbers into account.

Difficult to measure, but one should not ignore the principle.

Its a condition of the agreement with the provider of the equipment that there is a paid element to assess the sensitivity to pricing.

Its all up for discussion, its cheap by standards of what I've experienced. A model which allows a limited time or volume quota for free but charges for heavy use is probably the fairest charging model.

Once again, Irish Rail have completely missed the point. Most of the major IC bus operators now provide free Wifi. I'm sure there are technical reasons why wifi is harder to provide on trains but ultimately, Irish Rail have to compete with bus companies. If they can't compete on price, can barely compete on time and (in my experience on Aircoach to Belfast and BE to other places) can't compete on comfort, what exactly do they think is their appeal?

Of course it should be free, but this is a trial and the provider of the equipment is not being paid by Irish Rail from what we know

Other railway administrations do charge, GNER in the UK used to charge but removed the charge once they have recouped the investment. This is sensitivity analysis.

We have discussed this charge with Irish Rail and it looks unlikely to be long term its just a trial element and its likely impact is known. Since this is a trial it all could come to a halt in 3 months time depending on the business assessment

They could make it free for 1st class passengers, but paid for by the rest.

The on train equipment allows for that setup

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700

Will the IE service be available in stations? VIA Rail's is, and it would be a good way to snag the business traveller if s/he gets there early and is looking at a 30-40 min wait before boarding, with the same login being good when connected to the ontrain router. The station backhaul could be DSL and thus use cheaper gear than the ontrain stuff.

Several stations, certainly Connolly and Heuston, have eircom internet kiosks. It says its €6/hour, but was only charging me €4/hour in Connolly. Alternatively there is an internet café across the road from Connolly.

Not great, but its something.

I'm sure there's an alternative at Heuston and perhaps there's a franchise issue where eircom have been granted exclusivity, but in the VIA example WiFi is available in most if not all stations in the main corridor, so a passenger waiting for a connection at Portarlington for Cork say wouldn't have to leave the station area. It's the seamlessness of the ontrain/offtrain service which is helpful because one promotes the other.

Actually, eircom use their phoneboxes on the street as antennae, it would be useful to have some sort of link up, but yes, having it relatively seemless would be useful.

http://www.irishrail.ie/news_centre/news.asp?action=view&news_id=700