Train Wi-Fi rollouts: overcoming obstacles

It’s rare to find somewhere, either indoors or outside, where internet access is unavailable. The move towards an increasingly mobile workforce has been enabled by both the growth of Wi-Fi hotspots and the rapid adoption of tablets, smartphones and laptops.

The public’s use of Wi-Fi is so high that Cisco reports data offload from mobile devices via Wi-Fi or femtocells exceeded cellular traffic for the first time in 2015.

And our need to be glued to a screen doesn’t stop when we’re travelling. “We’re seeing high interest in Wi-Fi calling, location- based services, asset tracking and proximity- based services, which are designed to improve business productivity and meet the need for people to be able to work from anywhere at any time, securely,” says Stu Higgins, head of digital impact at technology company Cisco UK and Ireland.

“We have also seen this demand in the area of connected transport as commuters need to be able to do business tasks on the move.” He sees the public’s desire for increasingly connected cities and connected transportation as what’s driving the need for a supportive Wi-Fi infrastructure.