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Passengers on First Great Western trains will be able to sit back, relax and access on-train entertainment services with a single phone call to the RingGo pay-by-phone service from today (1 March). The service is available to rail travellers on specially adapted First Great Western carriages. Using touch-driven television screens on the back of every seat passengers can view a range of programmes, paying for the service with just their mobile phone and a credit or debit card. This world first in payments and entertainment is being provided by First Great Western in partnership with Volo TV and Cobalt Telephone Technologies, and offers customers a choice of on-demand, high quality television programmes. The service has been trailed in overnight sleepers and in one coach on-board a high-speed train since late last year. With good usage and positive feedback, the service is being extended and charges for viewing introduced via the RingGo service, better known as the UK's leading phone parking payment service. Viewers can choose from a selection of comedy, drama, documentaries, children's programmes, sport and news, using the interactive touch screens to pause, fast-forward and rewind. After an initial free trial session, travellers who wish to view, call the RingGo service to pay a single £3.95 charge per journey, using either their credit or debit card. As with phone parking, the user's mobile telephone number is used as a key identifier within the registration process. This means that those who have previously used either Volo TV or the standard RingGo parking service are fast-tracked through the payment process, as their card details are stored securely and recalled for each use of the service. First Great Western Customer Service and Commercial Director, Neil Micklethwaite, said: "Public reaction to our on-board entertainment trial has been extremely positive so we are pleased to be entering this next commercial phase of the roll out. While a number of different models were considered, we soon realised that secure mobile phone payments were the only viable way to satisfy our technical and operational requirements." "With RingGo a tried and tested solution across the First Great Western network for the last five years, and being used regularly by a substantial proportion of our customer base, it was the obvious solution." Harry Clarke, Commercial Director for RingGo agrees "First Great Western rail users have embraced RingGo parking since its inception, so we already have a large number of customers comfortable using the service. Given they're both fairly high tech solutions, expectations are high that there will be considerable overlap between those happy to park with RingGo, and those keen on on-train entertainment." "Finally, with ease of use a vital consideration, RingGo's ability to fast track payments is sure to keep this world first in enter-trainment moving at top speed." |
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