Virgin Trains has set its sights on tackling dropped calls for passengers and has teamed up with Vodafone to give travelers better in-carriage coverage . Vodafone said it will be putting in “repeater technology” in the trains to boost both 2G and 3G coverage.
The repeaters will be installed on all 52 of Virgin’s Pendolino trains on the London to Glasgow route by November of this year, and Vodafone says it will improve the rate of dropped calls by 60 percent.
Having attempted to use a data card several times on the Eurostar and found a frightening drop out rate, here’s hoping the repeaters find themselves passing through the Channel Tunnel sometime soon.
That’s great for Vodafone customers but what about the other networks? It would be better if Virgin was looking to put in something generic that benefited all users. I get frustrated that coverage is still such an issue & such a differentiator between the networks. There doesn’t seem to be a will to work together to share infrastructure & costs to improve coverage for all users. We’ve seen some deals but only on a limited basis.
Doesn’t Branson still own (at least a bit if not anything else) both Virgin Trains and Virgin Mobile (Virgin Media)? If so, why have Virgin Trains gone with Vodafone and not T-Mobile?
Anyhoo, it’s about time they did something about reception on trains in the UK. At the moment it’s a joke attempting to connect on South West Trains – even above ground and through some of the most heavily populated places in Western Europe.
Anthony’s last blog post..I’ve walked a 1000 miles in a year!
Of course, this is utter rubbish. It’s Orange installing the equipment on the trains. Plus don’t worry Jonathan, it is equipment for all operators