Sydney Buses trialling free Wi-Fi

Passengers on Sydney's M10 buses will now have access to free Wi-Fi as part of a trial of the technology, the New South Wales Government announced on Friday.

(Waiting for the bus image by Ben Cumming, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The six-month trial, which commenced on Friday, will allow commuters to log on via their laptops or smartphones for two sessions per day. Each session lasts for 45 minutes or until the user runs over their 30MB download limit.

"Passengers can now check their email, jump on Twitter, read the latest news online or get some work done — all while travelling on a bus," NSW Transport Minister John Robertson said in a statement.

The M10 service runs from Leichardt past the University of Sydney, Broadway Shopping Centre, the University of Technology Sydney and Central Station all the way through to the Sydney Cricket Ground, Randwick and the University of New South Wales. The services carry roughly two million passengers every year.

The trial follows a similar Wi-Fi trial on Manly's ferry service earlier this year. Robertson said that more than 120,000 people had used the service since its introduction.

"As each trial progresses we are learning more about the technology, the challenges of providing internet services on a moving object, and how to overcome them," he said. "Every trial gets us one step closer to rolling out these sorts of technologies across our broader public transport network."