Worldwide Bus Travel Tips

Wi-Fi on Buses and Trains: How often does it work in the United States?

The main selling point for bus companies is that taking the bus is cheaper than other means of transportation. The bus is still relevant today, but more and more, bus companies are focusing on new advantages to woo customers: modernized buses, more comfortable seats, available power outlets, and the holy grail for entertainment… onboard Wi-Fi on the bus.

However, like many customers, we’ve experienced inconsistency with the onboard Wi-Fi on our trips: sometimes it works perfectly fine, but on other occasions there’s lag. We’ve also had to deal with buses where the advertised Wi-Fi didn’t work at all, which, depending on your point of view, was actually a good thing as it forced us to spend time reflecting, admiring the scenery or even reading a book.

So does Wi-Fi really work on buses, and what are my chances of getting good functional Wi-Fi when I book my ticket? And what about power outlets? Our entertainment devices can always use the extra juice.

To answer these questions, we asked travelers using major North American bus operators to rate the quality of the Wi-Fi and power outlets that they experienced while riding the bus. Read on for the results of our study.

In the United States, it turns out that onboard Wi-Fi isn’t that bad.

Quality of Wi-Fi on buses

Let’s start with the bad news. 17% of our respondents indicated that there wasn’t any Wi-Fi provided at all during their last trip. This usually happens when you land on an older bus from the fleet. All the bus companies we’ve talked to and partnered with understand the value of more modern buses for travelers, and are in the transition of renewing their fleets, but this is a gradual process and takes time. So it’s entirely possible for you to land on an older bus model without Wi-Fi. But as these fleets are modernizing, we expect this number to dwindle in the coming years.

Todd Koch, Vice-President of Strategy & Business Development at Greyhound, had this to say:

“At Greyhound, 100% of our fleet has Wi-Fi. The speed and quality of our Wi-Fi depends on several factors such as the number of people using the system and the proximity of the cellular tower. For example, if a bus is going through a tunnel or a secluded area, the Wi-Fi experience can fluctuate. In general, we’ve noticed that our Wi-Fi performs best around dense markets due to the quality of the cellular network but we’ve also noticed that sometimes in super dense cities like New York City, users may experience a slower Wi-Fi experience due to the number of high-rise towers interfering with the cellular reception. We are always looking for ways to improve the onboard experience and will be rolling out some very exciting new on-bus amenities in the near future.”

When there is Wi-Fi on the bus, how good is the quality?

24% of the users we surveyed were satisfied with the quality of the Wi-Fi. From personal experience, members of the Busbud crew have participated in video conferences aboard Greyhound buses and were genuinely impressed by the service.

38% of our users rated the quality of the Wi-Fi as “bad” or “very bad”, giving us the impression that they were generally dissatisfied with the quality of the Wi-Fi provided. This might be due to a number of reasons:

  • high number of Wi-Fi users on the bus, lowering performance for everyone
  • high expectations in terms of of internet speed
  • domain restrictions for high-bandwidth sites like Youtube and Netflix: if users try to stream video and are consequently denied access to YouTube, the frustration can quickly mount.

Not bad. Not that great either.

At 23%, “average” was the most popular answer. Combined with respondents who were satisfied with Wi-Fi performance, 46% of total respondents’ expectations were met.

More importantly, when considering only respondents who had Wi-Fi available on their bus, over half of these respondents (55%) had their expectations met.

What about the advertised power outlets? Were they functional?

How often do Power Outlets work on buses?

You might not always have an excellent Wi-Fi experience on your bus trips in the US but at least the odds are in your favour that the power outlets can charge up your electronic devices with nearly 75% of our users telling us that the power outlets were properly working.

Todd Koch, Vice-President of Strategy and Business Development at Greyhound, explained why some power sockets don’t work aboard buses:

“When there is an issue with the power plugs, it is generally due to a tripped circuit breaker. The cause of a tripped circuit breaker is usually when a non-approved device that requires a lot of electricity, such as a hair dryer or a curling iron, is added to a circuit already being used by other devices like phone chargers, laptops, etc. At Greyhound, our drivers check the inverters as part of the pre-inspection process to ensure that this amenity is fully functioning.”

Is the train better?

Although the train is not as popular as buses and cars in America, there are still 30 million passengers that rely on this method of transportation for their travels each year. So naturally, we were curious — when it comes to onboard Wi-Fi, do trains do a better job than buses?

Quality of Wi-Fi on trains

18% of the respondents, who recently traveled by train described the Wi-Fi experience aboard the train as “bad” or “very bad”.

The train did receive some relatively positive scores as well, with 25% of respondents rating their experience as “good” or “very good” and another 17% of users who rated it as “average”.

However, most of the respondents (41%) tell us that they didn’t have any functioning Wi-Fi at all, which is a much higher amount than the 15% who described a similar experience on the bus.

Both buses and trains still have a long way to go to satisfy travelers with amenities like onboard Wi-Fi and power outlets, but if you had to choose, the bus seems to provide the better alternative in North America.

The best way to have internet during your trip is to have a data plan enabled with your phone.

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Methodology:

We surveyed thousands of our customers who recently traveled with major bus operators in the United States. They answered a two-question survey that allowed us to understand their perception of Wi-Fi quality provided on the bus trip and as well as the availability of functional power socket for charging their mobile devices.

For the train data, we deployed a one question Google Survey where we asked users to rate their Wi-Fi experience on their last train trip.