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Icomera Jumps on More Buses in Scotland
(25 Jan 2011, BWCS Staff)UK transport giant FirstGroup has signed Icomera to supply WiFi on-board services to passengers on its new Glasgow City Centre to Airport Shuttle service. The fleet, which consists of ten new luxury buses, represents an investment of over £1.5 million in the service by FirstGroup and will be operated by First in Glasgow in association with Glasgow Airport and BAA. According to Icomera, First has equipped the new vehicles with the supplier’s M200 series broadband gateways. These will enable passengers to access the internet, using a 3G HSPA network connection from O2.
The new 24 hour bus service will run at intervals of ten minutes apart during peak times. According to Ronnie Park, Managing Director at First in Glasgow, "Comfort and technology are what we are being asked for on this service and we are pleased to be able to offer it.”
UK buses are increasingly adding WiFi to their fleets in a bid to woo customers back on board. In September last year, bus and train group Stagecoach announced the launch a new fleet of WiFi-enabled double decker buses in Yorkshire, again installed by Icomera. According to the companies involved, the new vehicles cost around £2 million and are running across South Yorkshire and North East Derbyshire. Stagecoach says it will consider adding the in-vehicle WiFi access to all routes across the region. Stagecoach already uses Icomera's system on bus services in London, Wales, Cambridge and Oxfordshire.
Scotland already has WiFi on board many of its long-distance buses. Since July 2010, Citylink has been offering WiFi connections to passengers on its Citylink Gold service, which runs non-stop from Glasgow to Aberdeen with a second route heading up to Inverness. Citylink said the new services are aimed primarily at the business market in a bid to compete with trains running on the same routes. Citylink, which is part-owned by Scottish-based Stagecoach and the Singapore-based travel company ComfortDelGro, said the average fares for the Citylink Gold routes will be significantly less than first class train fares, but argued that journey times, end-to-end will be similar.
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