WiFi on Tube - Skipping Virgin Ad

How many people are familiar with the Virgin Media "splash pages" which appear on logging in to London Underground WiFi?  Underground Magazine suggests that this may be all some people ever see.

Their spoof feature echoes a sentiment and frustration I've often felt. "A spokesperson for TfL had this to say: “At TfL we want to offer our customers the most cutting edge technology. That’s why we went in this direction. Emails, instant messaging, your files on the go – these are all things we could have offered, but no-one else currently offers what we do: non-stop, high-speed access to this one advert.......

"Virgin staff expressed delight at the service’s success. “Our research found people crying out for an internet service that was available for the thirty-or-so seconds whilst a train is stopped, and for twenty-eight of those to be spent trying to click past an advert. And in the bit where we we asked for ‘any more comments’, over 80% of respondents wrote, ‘make the button to skip past the advert really tiny, and make it so if you click anywhere else, you just get taken straight to another advert’. So obviously that’s what we did.”

Admittedly I don't hate the advert so much to pay to get it removed, but I wonder how many people would pay for its removal? 

While on the subject of using smart mobile devices on the Tube, have you heard new announcements on the London Underground?   A number of my friends have heard station assistants saying "Please stand back from the edge of the platform when using smartphones and tablets".   On the Victoria Line @michald said that the announcer  there sounded quite baffled by his own message.

Are TfL worried that we're becoming so mesmerised by the internet that we'll fall onto the tracks?  Surely we can be just as engrossed in newspapers, books or magazines and we should be warned to stand back from the edge when reading those too?

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London Underground; Tube Posted by annie mole Friday, May 10, 2013 Permalink COMMENT HERE
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