GE 2024

Plus, you can have a better wank in the toilet if you've got rate good internet.

Again, missing the general point. And yes, business does make decisions on where to locate based on infrastructure whether that be communications transport or something else

Just close your eyes and think of your mum, like the rest of us do.

Nice try but I do the mum jokes round here. Please show some restraint. Unlike Loafs mum.

Yes. Were I trying to make a serious point, and not just take a casual pop at high value biznizmen who think society needs them to be online 24 hours a day, that would be it.

When I travelled on trains for work I got stuff done just fine without wifi. Not everything needs to be online.. but, tbh, I think giving people in trains the ability to watch Netflix is probably a more persuasive argument for a public infrastructure approach to something like that. Most people can’t do their job on a train anyway, but everyone can be entertained or do general online life stuff, and being able to do that on trains potentially makes them more attractive relative to road travel etc, which would be a step in the right direction.

Psychobel is correct that differences in infrastructure between countries influences investment/location decisions. I don’t know that wifi on trains in a small country where international-facing commerce is pretty centralised around one region is going to be a huge factor. Good rail infrastructure in general, encompassing reliability and connections etc, certainly benefits investment by opening up more of the country to it, thus balancing away from the South East… though when a country does a Brexit, nobody making reasoned investment decisions gets as far as ‘wifi on the Midland Mainline’ when they run down their list of ‘reasons not to choose Britain’.

You can download stuff before you get on the train.
But, imho, having wifi makes a significant selling point to casual travellers. "Might as well drive if I can't check Insta"

That's a heck of a lot more difficult and expensive, but yes of course having cleaner, better, cheaper, more frequent and more reliable trains is also more desirable.

I take trains a lot, my usual journey is 4 hours. I'm posting this from the middle of that very journey. I hate driving long distance, it's incredibly unproductive and uninteresting time.

The wifi is patchy. I download Netflix shows and prepare offline work for my journeys. I just flew from LA to Toronto with outstanding wifi and it was free. I would pay a premium to have reliable service on my train journey.

Not sure if any of that helps.

They can do what they want with the WiFi - everyone has 4G now anyway don’t they - as long as they impose a headphones-only rule.
I don’t want to hear your music, your Netflix or your teams meeting and think it’s rude as fuck that people seem to think it’s okay to broadcast this to the rest of the carriage. See also buses and trams.

I sat next to a bloke last week who was leading a zoom meeting on the train. He had headphones in, which was fine for what everyone else said. But why he felt the need to shout, I don't know. Presumably he wanted everyone to know he was in charge. Cnut.

My wife tells me I end up almost shouting in meetings when I have the headphones in. I don't mean to. I think I'm trying to be considerate and make myself heard clearly to the other people on the call.

That's brave of him leading a meeting in that scenario. Likely to lose connection very regularly. I wouldn't try it.

Which is fine at home. Makes you a cnut on a packed train.

Mince, you're a cunt.