SWIFT - Superfast Wi-Fi In-carriage for Future Travel

SWIFT will use high-speed in-carriage Wi-Fi to improve the passenger experience, enhance commercial

opportunities and improve train management capabilities. Wi-Fi on trains is currently delivered using bonded

mobile solutions. This is essentially providing Internet access to whole trains via a handful of tethered

smartphones. Improving capacity in-carriage requires trackside Wi-Fi backhaul, which relies on advanced

service management, with session handover at 2ms. This has been demonstrated in a lab but not in a real-life

environment. SWIFT will demonstrate this technology on UK rail, advancing the state-of-the-art. Furthermore,

Wi-Fi is moving beyond a pure Internet access model to value-added services based on location and presence-

awareness with Big Data analytics. These types of services are seen increasingly in the retail sector, but have

not as yet reached on-train Wi-Fi. SWIFT will bring this innovation to the UK rail sector through its application

development and SME Open Innovation competition. It will expose new businesses with creative, technical,

and user experience capabilities to the UK rail sector, enhancing the customer experience in rail travel.