Market-led fragmentation has left rail passengers with wildly uneven Wi-Fi experiences across different countries.

Europe and Asia’s rail networks, long heralded as a backbone of economic competitiveness, are now judged not only on punctuality and comfort but on the quality of the digital experience onboard. High-quality train Wi-Fi has shifted from nice-to-have to essential rail infrastructure. Commuters expect a home broadband-like experience for streaming, work calls and gaming while crossing the Swiss Alps or skirting Mount Fuji.

Where countries treat train connectivity as rail infrastructure and pair onboard Wi-Fi with rail-specific infrastructure (trackside, LEO satellite or both), everyday outcomes improve measurably for passengers. This study is the first of its kind to use crowdsourced Ookla Speedtest® data to benchmark country-level train Wi-Fi performance across Europe and Asia.

Key Takeaways:

• The gap separating Europe’s best and worst is startling. In Q2 2025, Sweden set the pace for train Wi-Fi in Europe with a 64.58 Mbps median download, followed by Switzerland (29.79 Mbps) and Ireland (26.33 Mbps). Laggards like Spain (1.45 Mbps), the UK (1.09 Mbps) and the Netherlands (0.41 Mbps) featured the poorest outcomes, with download speeds as much as 158 times slower than top-performing Sweden.
• Legacy Wi-Fi tech drags many rail networks. Across the European markets studied, nearly two in five connections still run on Wi-Fi 4 (a standard dating to 2009), and ~22% use the lower-capacity, more congestion- and interference-prone 2.4 GHz band. The UK still sees over half of all rail connections on Wi-Fi 4, with 38% on 2.4 GHz. In Poland, rail connections remain almost entirely on Wi-Fi 4 and the 2.4 GHz band. 
• Band and Wi-Fi gen matter, but backhaul is the real bottleneck. Within-country comparisons show substantial uplifts for 5 GHz vs 2.4 GHz (e.g., +328% in Germany) and Wi-Fi 5 vs Wi-Fi 4 (e.g., +241% in Germany). Yet countries that feature a more modern Wi-Fi mix and thus drive greater use of the 5 GHz band, like Spain and Italy, can still underperform on speeds. This demonstrates that backhaul (i.e., the connection between the train’s roof antennas and the public mobile networks), not just cabin Wi-Fi, is the dominant driver of performance.
• Asian rail networks feature modern Wi-Fi mix and lower latency but are not always faster. Taiwan posted the lowest latency and the only material Wi-Fi 6 share (~20%), while Japan and South Korea showed virtually no legacy Wi-Fi 4 or 2.4 GHz usage. Across Asia, typical median download speeds (6-8 Mbps) cluster below Europe’s leaders but above its laggards, reflecting different policy approaches (i.e., greater emphasis on cellular than Wi-Fi).
• Policy fingerprints are unmistakable and outweigh topographic and demographic factors. When governments and operators treat mobile networks as core rail infrastructure, and invest in dedicated trackside systems, higher-order MIMO with multi-operator bonded train-mounted antennas, and RF-permeable rolling-stock window retrofits, outcomes improve dramatically.

Fragmented Wi-Fi outcomes reflect different policy attitudes across Europe and Asia

Sweden and Switzerland lead the frontier, puncturing the premise that terrain is destiny

Analysis of Speedtest Intelligence® data reveals Europe’s train Wi-Fi experience is split between a performance frontier and a long tail, with a distribution that resembles two radically different market contexts. Sweden led the continent in Q2 2025 with a median download speed of 64.58 Mbps, more than four times Europe’s country-level median (7.59 Mbps) and over 150 times the Netherlands (0.41 Mbps). This lead extended to upload performance, with Sweden delivering uploads (54.95 Mbps) more than twice as fast as the next fastest country.

It was not always this way. From Q1 2022 to Q1 2024, Wi-Fi performance on Sweden’s train networks was flat at ~2 Mbps down and ~0.7–1.9 Mbps up, placing it in the bottom half of European countries. In Q2 2024, however, there was a clear structural break in the trend, with speeds jumping sharply and continuing to rise through Q1 2025. In practical terms, this means Swedish rail users have moved from a constrained Wi-Fi experience (where even video access was marginal) to a level that supports multi-user carriages with HD streaming and smoother video conferencing.

Sweden’s strong performance in mobile coverage along rail corridors has emerged despite challenging conditions, such as long, sparse tracks in the northern regions that face severe winter weather. This success stems from a pragmatic, modular policy framework that delivers targeted state aid where market failures are most evident. For instance, in 2022, the Swedish telecoms regulator PTS allocated €2 million to Telia and Net4Mobility for installing passive, operator-neutral infrastructure in select tunnels. Additionally, rail-specific coverage and capacity obligations were integrated into the 2023 spectrum auction for the 900/2100/2600 MHz bands, setting performance targets to boost capacity on mainlines using the 2100 and 2600 MHz bands while adding new sites for 900 MHz coverage.

In 2023, the Swedish government and PTS proposed that the rail infrastructure operator open access to mobile sites, fibre and power along rights-of-way. It also mandated mapping tunnel coverage, which identified 45 tunnels longer than 300 meters still lacking mobile service, along with developing a comprehensive cost plan. The assessment revealed 630 km of track falling below a 10 Mbps threshold (with a 16 dB margin), prompting efforts to address these gaps through the tunnel support initiatives and rail coverage obligations.

While eclipsed by Sweden for the first time in recent quarters and undergoing a decline in competitiveness, Swiss trains continue to be state of the art in terms of onboard connectivity, delivering median download speeds of 29.79 Mbps in Q2 2025 (albeit down significantly from 85.31 Mbps in Q1 2023, likely reflecting architectural changes or additional congestion). Like Sweden, it represents an exemplary engineering feat for a country characterized by extremely difficult terrain, with Swiss rail operator SBB’s network piercing the Alps with steep approaches, tight valleys, long tunnels, high viaducts and avalanche and rockfall zones.

The Swiss model for onboard connectivity differs markedly from most countries. While SBB offers public Wi-Fi on cross-border services (reflecting the data shared here) and at stations, domestic trains rely primarily on zero-rated mobile data via “SBB FreeSurf” rather than universal onboard Wi-Fi. FreeSurf requires a Swiss SIM and the SBB FreeSurf app; once on board, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons in the carriage recognize the device and flag the journey segment, allowing traffic to flow over the public mobile networks without debiting the passenger’s data allowance. SBB then settles the associated data usage with participating mobile operators, effectively subsidizing onboard connectivity.

This model sidesteps the shared onboard Wi-Fi bottleneck and the operating expense of repeaters and cellular backhaul, allowing rail and mobile operators to channel capital into a high-quality radio layer along rail corridors. Its critical limitation is access, however, as onboard connectivity effectively extends only to devices and users with a Swiss-issued SIM, constraining tourists and many business travelers.

Beyond Sweden and Switzerland, other countries that performed well above the European average for download speeds last quarter included Ireland (26.33 Mbps), Czechia (23.36 Mbps) and France (19.12 Mbps). Ireland also recorded the lowest latency of any European country in the period at 40 ms. That strong outcome, despite a disproportionately rural geography, is likely aided by legacy diesel rolling stock. With virtually no electrification and trains operating at lower speeds than many networks on the continent, cellular handovers occur less frequently, which can make better RF outcomes easier to achieve. 

Outside Central and Northern Europe, train Wi-Fi slows to a crawl

The performance delta between leading countries and laggards like Spain, the Netherlands and the UK was stark in Q2 2025 and has continued to widen over time. Median download speeds in these countries were as much as 158 times slower than in Sweden in Q2 2025, meaning the average rail passenger connected to a Wi-Fi network in these countries suffers a very poor quality of experience in basic applications like video streaming.

The UK’s underperformance is not a single-cause issue but the result of weaknesses across multiple layers. At the cabin level, over half of connections still run on Wi-Fi 4, and 38% of samples used the 2.4 GHz band in Q2 2025. This continued reliance on legacy Wi-Fi and the interference-prone, capacity-limited 2.4 GHz band constrains performance regardless of cellular backhaul quality. 

Compared with several European peers that organize rail under a single state holding or a clearly empowered state infrastructure manager, the UK has historically split responsibility for stations, services and rolling stock across multiple entities, which complicates collaboration with mobile operators. This friction is easing as GBR reforms bring passenger operations under public control and simplify coordination with state-owned Network Rail. Even so, performance remains weak, reflecting the UK mobile market’s lagging position in network quality (57th globally in the latest Speedtest Global Index™) and the reliance on patchy, incidental public mobile coverage for cellular backhaul.

The Netherlands’ poor train Wi-Fi performance is striking given it ranks in the global top 15 for mobile network quality over the same period, with favorable terrain and high urbanization that enables low-cost coverage along rail corridors. The gap reflects under-investment in the onboard Wi-Fi layer: virtually all connections still use Wi-Fi 4, and usage is very low and has collapsed as passengers shift to their own 5G connections. Dutch rail operator NS has reportedly floated ending the Wi-Fi service if the ministry waives the concession requirement.

Cellular takes precedence over Wi-Fi onboard leading Asian rail networks

Policy muscle in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan has prioritized dedicated trackside cellular coverage, with public Wi-Fi treated more as an amenity than a core service and most passengers relying on their own 4G/5G connections onboard (as in the Netherlands and Switzerland). Even so, rail operators still provide Wi-Fi across much of their rolling stock, and deployments are generally more modern than in Europe.

Wi-Fi 5 and the 5 GHz band are widespread in Japan and South Korea (>90% sample share) on rail networks, with little of the legacy burden seen in countries like the UK or Poland, and Taiwan already features a meaningful and growing share of Wi-Fi 6 (about 20% in Q2 2025) despite still featuring some Wi-Fi 4 (30% sample share). 

While none of the studied Asian countries competed at the level of the best European performers in terms of speeds on train Wi-Fi in Q2 2025, each performed well above the long tail of laggards in Europe and close to the average. Taiwan led the pack with median download speeds of 8.1 Mbps in Q2 2025, followed by South Korea (7.11 Mbps) and Japan (6.89 Mbps). The same ranking pattern was observed for upload speeds.

Taiwan delivered the lowest latency of any country in the same period (13 ms), with median response significantly below South Korea (62 ms) and Japan (83 ms). 

Rail networks pose one of the most daunting engineering challenges for high-quality Wi-Fi

Rail operators view onboard connectivity as a lever for revenue, loyalty and operations, while policymakers increasingly frame it as part of the digital backbone of national transport systems. The engineering reality is harsher: a train carriage is a metal Faraday cage moving through tunnels, cuttings and rural not-spots, where cellular handovers are frequent and fragile. Best-effort aggregation of public 4G and 5G networks rarely delivers the capacity, stability and latency modern use cases demand.

Delivering a home broadband-like experience on the tracks requires tight coordination across multiple infrastructure layers managed by different entities, typically split into train-to-ground backhaul (via cellular and/or satellite) and on-train distribution systems (via Wi-Fi). 

Backhaul still mostly relies on incidental mobile network coverage

The prevailing approach, still used in the vast majority of European countries, relies on wireless backhaul that piggybacks on “incidental” public mobile coverage, feeding dedicated external antennas on each carriage. Because this coverage is incidental, the mobile site grid is usually optimized for nearby population centers rather than the rail corridor itself, creating frequent not-spots and forcing fallback to lower-frequency spectrum with less bandwidth and capacity at cell edges.

On the train itself, regardless of the backhaul feeding the roof-mounted antennas, multi-SIM gateways bond signals from public mobile networks (and, increasingly, LEO providers such as Starlink) and feed an Ethernet backbone to multiple Wi-Fi access points per carriage. Greater bonding diversity across public mobile networks (i.e., using operators with independent infrastructure, not actively shared RAN) typically improves outcomes, since connections can switch dynamically as signal conditions vary. That diversity also adds cost, meaning some rail operators choose a single-network arrangement to contain spend at the expense of performance.

The train carriage itself has become a signal attenuator

The use of external antennas for backhaul is specifically intended to mitigate the fact that rail carriages themselves have become a significant signal attenuator and Faraday cage (and means onboard Wi-Fi can play a complementary role in mitigating against signal loss suffered by 4G and 5G signals on user devices). Modern rolling stock often uses low-E glass with metalized coatings (inducing more signal loss than a layer of concrete in many cases) and foil-backed insulation to reduce heat loss and act as an acoustic barrier. The impact of these RF-hostile designs is compounded at speed, when frequent cell handovers, the Doppler effect, cuttings and tunnels can create jitter (variance in latency over time) and signal dropouts.

Inside the train, crowding adds “body loss” and concentrates hundreds of users onto whatever backhaul is available. This also strains the onboard Wi-Fi, a shared medium whose performance depends on access point placement, channel planning, per-car Ethernet backhaul, and QoS or fair-use policies that may aggressively shape traffic and artificially depress performance.

Leading countries are mobilizing a diverse policy toolkit to deliver better outcomes

Dedicated trackside deployments are needed to tackle cellular not-spots

While cost-effective, leading countries are moving away from the incidental coverage model and converging on dedicated trackside deployments, fostering tighter collaboration between mobile and rail operators to deliver better outcomes. Purpose-built radios along the rail right-of-way, with close inter-site spacing and engineered tunnel coverage using leaky feeders and small cells, allow capacity to scale with corridor demand rather than the surrounding macro grid.

In France, for example, a dedicated trackside layer was introduced on flagship corridors beginning with Paris/Lyon. Orange won an SNCF-run tender to build the network (known as NET.SNCF). Site spacing of ~2–3 km was initially targeted, including the implementation of antenna downtilt and clutter management in cuttings and tunnels, to cater to a TGV (French high-speed train) traveling at 300 km/h handing over base stations as frequent as every 15 seconds. 

Notwithstanding the poor performance observed in this study, Austria has employed a similar state-orchestrated, co-funded program since 2015. It has deployed hundreds of mobile sites across 1,500 km of track, initially targeting trackside 4G sites roughly every 5 km and DAS/leaky-feeder systems in tunnels, delivered through a mixture of new-build sites and co-location on existing rail operator ÖBB assets such as GSM-R masts and catenary masts (used to support the overhead electric wires).

Austria’s interventions are based on three-way governance, with ÖBB as the corridor owner and project integrator, mobile operators funding and operating the networks, and the Ministry co-funding and setting expectations via the Rahmenplan (the federal financing instrument that underwrites rail infrastructure programmes in Austria).

In Asia, meanwhile, the Japanese government has subsidized cellular extensions into tunnel segments through a “Radio Shadow Countermeasure Program” with dedicated DAS/relay installations. This means all Shinkansen tunnels have been covered with mobile coverage across NTT Docomo, KDDI and SoftBank since 2020.

Rolling stock retrofits focus on making modern glass less like a layer of concrete

Maximizing returns on dedicated trackside investment means treating the rolling stock as part of the policy toolkit too. Upgrades to the external train-to-ground path focus on multi-band 4×4 (and higher) MIMO and adopting active rooftop antennas powered over Ethernet (PoE). By moving filters and radio components into the antenna radome, operators can avoid long RF coax runs and cut signal losses. Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, for example, used its “advanced TrainLab” program to test and compare rooftop antenna carriers and component combinations, and has since signed a turnkey retrofit and new-build contract with HUBER+SUHNER and McLaren Applied for active PoE rooftop antennas as part of its fleet modernization.

To cut reliance on on-board repeaters and reduce signal attenuation in cellular-based systems (e.g., Switzerland’s SBB FreeSurf) where Wi-Fi is not used, operators have turned to window-replacement programs using laser-treated, RF-permeable low-E glass. Research by EPFL, Swisscom and SUPSI found such windows to be “as good as ordinary glass” for mobile signal, mitigating the 20–30 dB losses recorded by the UK Department for Transport in testing.

Over the last two years, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn announced the laser treatment of 70,000 windows across 3,300 ICE/IC cars (at a cost of €50 million, US$58.7M) and began regional retrofits, following the 2020 decision to equip new high-speed ICE rolling stock with RF-permeable glass as standard. Belgium has pursued a similar policy, abandoning a national on-train Wi-Fi rollout (projected to cost €173 million (US$203M) upfront and €13 million (US $15.3M) in annual operating costs) and redirecting €40 million (US$47M) to alter window coatings and prompt passengers to rely only on their cellular subscriptions while on board.

LEO satellite is emerging as a complement to cellular backhaul for trains

The appeal of low Earth orbit (LEO) for rail operators is increasingly clear. It can add coverage resilience when bonded with cellular on rural, coastal and non-electrified corridors where dedicated trackside and macro layers are thin. LEO’s markedly lower latency and strong burst capacity relative to legacy GEO systems used by many rail operators enables step-change improvements in the onboard passenger Wi-Fi experience and supports operational uses such as CCTV backhaul.

Notwithstanding the opportunity, the constraints of LEO solutions in a rail context are just as real. Hardware maturity still lags aviation and maritime, with far fewer rail-certified, low-profile roof-mount terminals that combine ingress protection, shock and vibration resilience and compliance with EN rail standards, which limits scale for now. Other barriers include sky-view limitations in tunnels and deep cuttings, the operating cost of LEO backhaul for high-demand Wi-Fi unless traffic is shaped and offloaded to cellular, and roof space, power and EMC (electromagnetic compatibility) trade-offs on legacy rolling stock.

Recent commercial and policy developments point to a hybrid end state for LEO on trains, rather than a full replacement for cellular backhaul. Momentum is building in Europe through targeted route trials, limited fit-outs and active procurements, with noticeably less activity in Asia so far. SpaceX’s Starlink and Eutelsat’s OneWeb are the primary LEO constellations in the rail segment, both now in live trials with integrators such as Icomera and CGI, following successful deployments across other transport modes like aviation. 

ScotRail, backed by the Scottish Government, has been an early mover with a six-month Starlink pilot on rural northern routes, targeting enhanced passenger Wi-Fi, GPS tracking and live CCTV. In France, SNCF has launched a national tender to equip the fleet with hybrid satellite and terrestrial cellular backhaul, with Eutelsat OneWeb signalling its intent to bid. Italy has ministry-sponsored LEO trials on the Rome to Milan corridor with Trenitalia. PKP Intercity in Poland, České dráhy in Czechia and LTG Link in Lithuania have also tested Starlink terminals to lift onboard Wi-Fi performance.

Policy is converging on using LEO as an additive layer within a multi-link software-defined wide area network ( SD-WAN) gateway onboard that also bonds multiple independent terrestrial cellular networks. In the near term, rail operators will prioritise the corridors with the highest return on investment, need to engineer antenna diversity onboard (for example, two spaced flat-panel terminals to improve link availability through slews, curves and partial obstructions) and issue RFPs that preserve multi-orbit and multi-provider choice with rail-grade certifications for LEO terminals.

Rail connectivity is undergoing a renaissance as satellite and dedicated 5G networks for rail converge

Alongside investments in LEO solutions, rail operators in developed markets are preparing to migrate from legacy GSM-R to Future Railway Mobile Communications System (FRMCS), a 5G-based railway communications standard defined by 3GPP for mission-critical rail. The shift is capital intensive but delivers a dedicated, private 5G trackside network for safety-critical functions such as driver-to-signaler voice, ETCS train control data, remote monitoring and control of trackside assets and live operational and security video.

In Europe, deployments are planned (into the 2030s) primarily in the 900 MHz band with an additional 1.9 GHz capacity layer, and the system will incorporate mission-critical push-to-talk, strict quality of service and, in time, network slicing. While FRMCS focuses on operational communications rather than passenger Wi-Fi or public cellular, the trackside densification it drives is likely to lift the baseline for onboard Wi-Fi by delivering a stronger, more contiguous cellular backhaul layer for bonding.

Together with more capable roof-mounted antennas, RF-permeable window retrofits and Wi-Fi 6E/7 upgrades, these interventions give lagging countries a clear set of levers to lift passenger Wi-Fi performance on board over the coming years.