Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the data demand per train for onboard WiFi by the completion of the franchise renewal process in 2028.

The estimated data demand for on board wi-fi for a train is determined by the average journey duration, number of people on the train and the applications passengers are using. Today, an allowance of 30MBytes per passenger journey equates to 60-100GBytes per train per month, which is expected to rise to 300-500GBytes as demand increases.

To ensure that connectivity keeps pace with expected consumer demand, Train Operating Companies (TOC’s) will have an obligation to increase the minimum data allowance by 25% year on year once the service is fully available.