- Google tops the on-train Wi-Fi bandwidth league table, with Instagram, Facebook, Netflix and TikTok close behind, confirming rail passengers now expect a home broadband experience while on the move.
- Insights are drawn from the anonymised Wi-Fi traffic of more than two million daily users travelling on thousands of trains in service across Europe and North America over the last 12 months.
- Rail operators are trialling low-Earth-orbit satellite technology – such as SpaceX’s Starlink – to boost onboard Wi-Fi speeds and reliability for passengers and day-to- day train operations.
Rail passengers increasingly expect onboard Wi-Fi to mirror the always-on, content-rich experience of their home broadband. New figures from connectivity specialist Icomera – published today on World Wi-Fi Day – indicate that Google, Instagram and Facebook are absorbing the biggest share of on-train Wi-Fi bandwidth.
Key Findings
- Passenger use of Google is the single largest consumer of on-train Wi-Fi
- Image- and short-video platforms Instagram, Facebook and TikTok followed close
- Long-form streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Prime Video all feature in the top 10, alongside music-streaming leaders Spotify and Apple’s iTunes.
- WhatsApp was the most widely used messaging app; Snapchat appeared in the North American top ten but not in the European list.
| 1. Google | 6. YouTube |
| 2. Instagram | 7. WhatsApp |
| 3. Facebook | 8. TikTok |
| 4. Netflix | 9. Amazon Prime Video |
| 5. Spotify | 10. Apple iTunes |
From Email to Entertainment
“When on-train Wi-Fi was first offered in the early 2000s, it primarily attracted business passengers with the promise of improving their productivity by allowing them to send work emails while they travelled” says Paul Barnes, Chief Marketing Officer at Icomera, a subsidiary of Equans, a global leader in the energy and services sector.
“Today we see a typical user consume 100 megabytes during a Wi-Fi session, which would be enough for those early 2000s business passengers to send potentially 1,000+ emails over the course of their journey – but most of that data is now being used for streaming video, music and social media. All passenger groups want the home broadband experience on the move”.
This raises the question of how rail operators can keep pace with the constantly evolving digital landscape.
Starlink Enters the Mix
Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks are emerging as a viable solution for meeting increasing passenger expectations and evolving rail operator requirements. Icomera signed an authorised reseller agreement with SpaceX’s Starlink in December 2024 and is trialling the service with operators on both sides of the Atlantic.
“We’ve seen impressive early results when adding satellite into the mix alongside the 4G and 5G cellular networks that trains are already connecting to” Barnes says. “Even in remote rural areas the performance is comparable to an inner-city 5G connection. This will benefit both train passengers and operational systems such as live video surveillance or remote diagnostics.”
“With data-hungry passengers and operational systems now sharing the same digital path, reliable high-capacity connectivity is fast becoming as essential to rail travel as the tracks themselves.”