MuniWireless

Wightlink Isle of Wight Ferries will soon be offering Wi-Fi access to passengers on ferries in the South of England running between the Isle of Wight and the mainland towns of Portsmouth and Lymington. In the beginning, Wi-Fi access is limited to the crew of the ferries who will use it for their own operations and fleet-tracking.

According to the press release, “the implementation of on-board Wi-Fi is part of a major modernization program that includes the commissioning of three new ships, recently constructed in Croatia and currently undergoing sea trials. With eight car ferries and three FastCats in the fleet, annually Wightlink carries over 5.5 million passengers, 1.2 million cars, and almost 200,000 coaches and freight vehicles.”

The ferries are equipped with Moovera’s access points, the same that are installed in buses operating between London and Oxford (as well as Reading). The Moovera access points create a bridge between a vessel and a next-generation 3G HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) cellular broadband network from T-Mobile, and in turn provide Ethernet connectivity for ship systems, secure Wi-Fi for crew laptops, and built-in GPS for real-time fleet tracking.