In a move that will surely send shockwaves through the chai-wallahs of Leipzig and the croissant-munchers of Paris, the Great British Rail Network has unveiled its latest masterstroke: WiFi on trains that might, if you hold your tongue just right, actually load a webpage before you reach your destination. Yes, fellow travellers, the age of the dial-up screech on the 7:14 from Paddington to Swindon is over. Or at least, it’s been replaced by a signal so weak it could be mistaken for a dying man’s pulse.
Let us pause to savour the irony. For decades, the British railway system has been the laughingstock of Europe, a crumbling monument to privatisation run amok, where a single ticket costs more than a mortgage payment and delays are measured not in minutes but in existential despair. And yet, here they are, promising to ‘revolutionise’ our commute with the digital equivalent of a soggy biscuit. The government’s press release, penned by some junior minister with a degree in spin, boasts that this new WiFi will ‘boost productivity by 12.4%’ — a figure so precise it must have been extracted from the hindquarters of a unicorn.
But let us not be churlish. After all, what could be more productive than staring at a spinning circle of doom while the train stalls outside Reading for the third time this week? The WiFi, they claim, will allow the ‘mobile professional’ to ‘seamlessly’ attend Zoom meetings, as if the prospect of your face freezing mid-sentence is some kind of corporate nirvana. I can already see the heads of Deloitte bobbing in unison as they buffer through a presentation on synergies, their souls gently leaching out through their earbuds.
Of course, no British infrastructure project would be complete without a generous dollop of farce. The contract, rumoured to be worth £500 million, has been awarded to a company that previously supplied WiFi to the Arctic Circle’s only herring cannery. There are reports that the signal will be delivered via carrier pigeon for the first six months, with a software update promised for Q4 2025. And the cost? Naturally, it will be recouped through a 400% fare increase and a mandatory subscription to ‘GWR Plus’, a service that also offers exclusive access to a digital collection of Victorian etchings.
But here’s the real kicker: the French, those perennial rivals in all things locomotive, have already perfected train WiFi. Their TGV network boasts speeds that would make Elon Musk weep, and they have the audacity to serve wine while doing it. Meanwhile, our great nation is celebrating the arrival of 4G in the Watford Gap tunnel. This is not a revolution; it is a gentle, bureaucratic shuffle towards adequacy.
And yet, I find myself oddly moved. There is something quintessentially British about celebrating a modest improvement as a world-beating triumph. It is the spirit of Dunkirk, of the Blitz, of queuing politely for a paltry upgrade. So, raise a glass of lukewarm gin to the railway barons and their digital dreams. May your Zoom calls be only mildly pixelated. May your buffering be brief. And may the 18:15 to Bristol Temple Meads actually arrive before the 19:00 news. But do not hold your breath. This is Britain, after all. And in Britain, we do not revolutionise. We gently, persistently, and with a stiff upper lip, make do.
