Network Rail has announced that a number of mainline stations are to be fitted with free Wi-Fi services from early next year. Planning for the roll-out of the Wi-Fi service is already underway, with Network Rail awarding a contract to Telent to deliver the scheme, which will cover 20 stations in total.
Euston and London Bridge stations already provide free Wi-Fi to passengers following an earlier pilot scheme. Wi-Fi will be phased in to the remaining stations across the country from Spring 2020 and will take around one year to fully deploy.
London Victoria is expected to be the first of the new stations to go live.
The full list of stations to be fitted with the free Wi-Fi service are:
London stations
- Cannon Street
- Charing Cross
- Clapham Junction
- Euston
- King’s Cross
- London Bridge
- Liverpool Street
- Paddington
- St Pancras International – lower level
- (Retail at St Pancras is managed by HS1)
- Victoria
- Waterloo
National stations
- Birmingham New Street
- Bristol Temple Meads
- Edinburgh Waverley
- Glasgow Central
- Guildford
- Leeds
- Liverpool Lime Street
- Manchester Piccadilly
- Reading
Key point to remember is that “free” Wi-Fi is not encrypted so avoid carrying out sensitive tasks such online banking, online purchases etc as the wi-fi signal can be intercepted. Also beware phoney wi-fi spots with similar looking names to genuine wi-fi spots. A hacker with a laptop could be sitting there with a phoney wi-fi setup and steal your data.
Most internet connections are not encrypted once they hit the cable — the encryption takes place between device software (browsers etc) and the end service provider (websites etc).
So long as your browser connection is secure, then connecting over an open wi-fi is no more dangerous than connecting over an ethernet cable.