InterCity buses offer free onboard Wi-Fi with Spark

New Zealand’s iconic national bus service InterCity has selected Spark Digital as its partner to launch Wi-Fi across its entire fleet. From this summer travellers and tourists will benefit from seamless 3G and 4G mobile Wi-Fi across New Zealand’s largest passenger transport network.

InterCity awarded the contract after an extensive trial on selected routes in order to determine the best coverage and technology from a range of network providers.

Simon Gillespie, Spark Digital general manager of Corporate Clients, says InterCity chose Spark Digital on the strength of the company’s reputation for providing exceptional ICT solutions, its superior coverage, and the capability to support a number of other future on-board entertainment initiatives.

He says “Spark New Zealand’s recent purchase of 700Mhz spectrum puts us in the best position to deliver a high-performance 4G mobile network for New Zealand inside and outside of the urban centres. The new agreement is a strong endorsement of InterCity’s trust in Spark Digital to ensure they continually evolve and take advantage of range of digitisation solutions that will be available to their customers.”

John Thorburn, InterCity CEO, says that InterCity will be the only nationwide long distance bus company to have free Wi-Fi on every route.

“We carry over one million passengers each year and together with our luxury InterCity GOLD seating service, providing seamless Wi-Fi will ensure our customers travel in style and remain connected whether they are travelling for business or pleasure on all our routes.”

“InterCity is passionate about delivering our customers the best services.” says Thorburn. “Our first step is to deliver Wi-Fi across the fleet and we will look to follow this with other customer entertainment options.”

The agreement between Spark Digital and InterCity has been signed this month and the service will be rolled out over the summer period with many key routes activated before Christmas. Spark Digital is the incumbent communications provider for InterCity’s fixed, mobile and WAN services.