Virgin Media has hailed the success of its London Underground WiFi service, claiming nearly 9 million tweets, Facebook posts, emails and web pages visits were delivered by during the 2012 Olympics.
The Wi-Fi service was launched at the beginning of the summer and now features in 72 stations. Its busiest day was 1 August, when Team GB won its first medals thanks with Helen Glover and Heather Stanning in the rowing, and Bradley Wiggins in the cycling.
Virgin Media said the busiest stations were Stratford, North Greenwich, West Ham, Covent Garden, Canning Town and Waterloo. Nearly half a million people went online during the Games.
The company is offering free WiFi until after the Paralympic games, when a free portal featuring travel information, updates and news will be available to all customers. Customers can pay to sign up to a full WiFi service.
London Underground’s director of strategy and service development Gareth Powell said: “WiFi at Tube stations helped keep everyone moving and entertained throughout the Games with up-to-the-minute travel information and journey planners at their fingertips.
“It’s proving to be a great service and we expect it to be very popular during the Paralympics too. We look forward to continuing the roll-out and connecting up to 120 London Underground stations by the end of the year.”
Virgin was forced to overhaul its Underground service within a week of launch following complaints from privacy campaigners that it was snooping on customers’ emails and web browsing activity.
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