Public & Transport WiFi Data SIM Cards
Multi-network data SIMs for onboard and public WiFi — where a connection dropping means fifty people noticing at the same moment.
A route is a tour of every operator's dead spots
A fixed site has one coverage problem. A bus, coach or train has a different one every few miles — and no single operator has clean coverage along a whole route, which is precisely why onboard WiFi has a reputation.
Up to four networks, one SIM
In the UK, France and Spain a Wave SIM reaches four operators. In Germany, Italy and Ireland, three. On a moving vehicle that means the gaps have to line up across several networks before passengers notice anything.
Profile changes without the depot
On hardware that supports remote provisioning we load or switch the network profile for you from our side — no waiting for the vehicle to come off the road. It depends on the device, so ask us whether yours qualifies.
Pooled across the fleet
Passenger WiFi is the one application where pooling is almost always right: a quiet vehicle subsidises a busy one, and the pool has no cap.
What a single network costs you
Public WiFi is judged by its worst moment, not its average.
Gaps that belong to the route
Cuttings, tunnels, bridges, valleys and the long rural stretch in the middle. A single-network SIM inherits every one of that operator's weak points along the line, every single journey.
Everyone notices at once
Unlike a sensor dropping out, this failure has an audience. It arrives as complaints to the driver, poor scores in the operator survey and a line in the next tender.
Peak demand meets a busy cell
The vehicle is fullest at rush hour, which is exactly when the cell it is passing through is most contended. Reaching several operators spreads that load rather than queueing behind it.
What you'll be connecting
One heavy application and a set of light ones that often share the same vehicle.
What a vehicle actually uses
Passenger WiFi is the heaviest application on this site, and pretending otherwise would waste your time.
Passenger WiFi, one vehicle
Roughly 20–80 GB a month depending on passenger numbers and whether video is throttled. This belongs on pooled data, which has no cap.
Displays and ticketing
Roughly 0.1–0.5 GB a month each. These are the cheap passengers on the link and fit a shelf plan easily.
Onboard CCTV
Roughly 2–5 GB a month on event clips, far more if streamed. Usually worth its own SIM so it cannot be starved by passenger traffic.
If passenger WiFi is the job, start from pooled data rather than a shelf plan — a fleet pool lets the quiet vehicles carry the busy ones, and nothing runs out mid-route. Shelf plans make sense for the displays, validators and telematics, which are small and predictable.
A useful guide for capping: throttling video is the single biggest lever on passenger usage, often halving it without anyone complaining.
These are indicative figures, not measurements of your fleet. Give us a month of traffic from one vehicle and we will size the pool against it before you commit.
Plans for vehicles and public spaces
Prices shown in your own currency. The plans below suit displays, ticketing, telematics and onboard CCTV. For passenger WiFi itself, pooled data is the right starting point.
Europe 25 GB / 12 Months
Most boughtStandard SIM
Europe 12 GB / 12 Months
Standard SIM
Europe 6 GB / 12 Months
Standard SIM
Running passenger WiFi across a fleet? Talk to us about pooled data — uncapped, shared across every vehicle, and quoted on the numbers.
Common questions
Does it switch networks while the vehicle is moving?
The modem reselects when the current operator becomes unusable, which takes a few seconds and shows up as a brief stall rather than a dropped session for most things people do on a phone. It is not a seamless handover like a phone call — nothing at this price is — but it turns a five-mile dead stretch into a few seconds of buffering.
How much data does one passenger use?
Wildly variable, and video is the whole answer. Someone reading email and messaging uses a few megabytes in an hour; someone streaming video uses 0.5–2 GB. That is why fleet pools and video throttling exist. If you are sizing from scratch, budget 20–80 GB per vehicle per month and refine it from real traffic after the first month.
Can we run a captive portal or terms page?
That is a function of your router or WiFi platform rather than the SIM — most onboard routers include it. The data plan is indifferent to it. Worth knowing that a portal adds a little traffic per session and, more usefully, gives you the per-device controls that keep usage predictable.
Does the APN change when the SIM switches network?
No. The APN is set once in the router and stays put through reselection, so one build works across the whole fleet whichever operator a given vehicle is attached to at the time.
What if a vehicle uses more than its plan?
Nothing auto-bills at a surprise rate. Refills on a prepaid plan go up to 100 GB, and the portal can notify you before a plan runs out rather than after. For passenger WiFi specifically, pooled data has no cap and is the arrangement that stops this being a monthly question at all.
Tell us about the fleet
How many vehicles, what the routes are, and whether it's passenger WiFi, displays or both. We'll size the pool and send a quote, usually the same day.