The plans for the 250th anniversary of the American revolution, which kicks off in earnest on July 4, have drawn media scrutiny in the US. One issue has been the subject of recurrent discussion: the role of President Donald Trump.

Behind this scrutiny is the claim that Trump is co-opting the anniversary for his own agenda. His administration’s alleged sidelining of the non-partisan “America250” commission, which was established by Congress in 2016, in favour of his rival “Freedom 250” organisation has drawn particular comment.

The 250th anniversary, it seems, has become a hotly contested battleground.

This is not entirely without precedent. As historian Michael Hattem explains in his 2024 book, The Memory of ‘76, Americans have long argued over the revolution’s lessons and legacy. This can be traced to the late 18th century, when US politics began to assume some of the adversarial qualities all too familiar today.

In the 1790s, the arguments were generally between Alexander Hamilton’s Federalists and Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans. For Federalists, who were keen to rebuild the relationship with Britain, July 4 celebrations often emphasised order and strong government.

For the Democratic-Republicans, however, the anniversary offered an opportunity to criticise what they saw as Federalist fealty to Britain. The result was that July 4 commemorations often became highly partisan.

Competing claims on July 4 recurred in subsequent decades, especially during the 1850s when sectional tensions between the north and south worsened. At the centre of these tensions was slavery.

For African-American abolitionists, the ideals articulated by the Declaration of Independence provided weapons with which to attack the evil of slavery in the south. The most powerful example of this was an 1852 speech given by Frederick Douglass in which he pointedly asked: “what to the slave is the fourth of July?”

The outbreak of civil war in 1861 further intensified the sectional divide over July 4. Many white southerners even drew parallels between the south’s status in the union and that of the 13 American colonies in the British empire.

According to this view, just as American colonists had been oppressed by the “tyranny” of Britain’s King George III – who they held responsible for the imposition of taxes and restrictive legislation – so was the south similarly oppressed by the north’s refusal to countenance the expansion of slavery.

By tracing this connection, historian Paul Quigley notes that these southerners used July 4 to present “themselves as the real Americans and northerners as traitors”. This was the memory of 1776 used to justify secession. The view of the then-president, Abraham Lincoln, was of course the complete opposite. For him, it was the union which was the true heir to the ideals of July 4.

Yet more arguments over the revolutionary past followed during the centennial of 1876. The anniversary came amid an economic recession and towards the end of the period known as “Reconstruction”. This period had seen the federal government readmit southern states into the union while also attempting to secure the rights of the formerly enslaved.

For some white northerners, the centennial was seen as an opportunity to promote reconciliation with the south. One consequence of this was that African-American contributions to the revolution were marginalised, something black communities in turn actively contested.

Attempts by local elites to dominate July 4 commemorations in cities like Boston similarly provoked pushback from recent immigrants and minority groups determined to ensure their inclusion in the commemorations. As a result of these tussles, the centennial of 1876 was marked by what historian Jack Noe has called “the deep sectional, partisan and racial divisions of an unreconciled nation”.

The 1976 bicentennial

Similar to its predecessor, the 1976 commemorations followed an enormously divisive conflict: the Vietnam war. And, again like the 1870s, the anniversary also unfolded during an era of economic uncertainty. An oil crisis in 1973, caused by an embargo imposed by oil-producing countries in the Middle East, was quickly followed by a recession that lasted until 1975.

There were even accusations of corruption levelled at the Bicentennial Commission, which had been created to plan the 200th anniversary, and linked to the activities of the Nixon administration. The commission was dissolved in 1973 and replaced by a new organisation called the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.

The bicentennial was thus another fraught anniversary. There were high-profile events in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, some of which were attended by Queen Elizabeth II at the invitation of the then-US president, Gerald Ford.

Following the social unrest of the Vietnam era, as well as the political turmoil of the Watergate Scandal which had led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president in 1974, many Americans found escape in patriotic nostalgia. The anniversary even drew interest abroad. One small village in northern England, Warton in Lancashire, marked the occasion with a ten-day party due to its ancestral connections to George Washington.

Elsewhere though, the 200th anniversary again revealed domestic division. From the left came criticisms of excessive commercialisation, with historian Jesse Lemisch identifying a slew of what he called “bicentennial schlock”.

In some American towns and cities, meanwhile, commemorations likewise exposed discord. In Boston, for instance, the anniversary became tied up with local tensions linked to the desegregation of schools.

The revolutionary past has long been a contested battleground in the US, particularly during periods of partisan politics, social tumult and economic uncertainty. In this regard, the 250th anniversary has much in common with its predecessors.

The Duchess of Sussex and her young children will not travel to London on Monday with Prince Harry after a demand for extra security was turned down.

The decision by the Sussexes is the latest twist after ten days of fraught discussions which are said to have reduced Harry ‘to tears’.

Harry will fly to London alone on Monday. It is not known if he has accepted his father’s offer to stay at a Royal residence. Several reports have claimed Charles has offered private apartments at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle.

But sources close to the couple have not ruled out Meghan and the children coming to the UK later in the week. Archie and Lilibet have not seen King Charles since 2022.

Meghan is due to join her husband at an event in Birmingham on Friday to promote next year’s Invictus Games, the charity for wounded servicemen that Harry set up in 2014.

It is understood Meghan and Harry could bring Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, with them when they travel to other parts of the UK.

Sources previously claimed there have been ‘real and credible threats’, including threats of terrorism, against Harry and his family in the capital.

The five-day Sussex trip to the UK has been fraught with upset and drama.

It is understood Prince Harry will meet his father King Charles during the visit, with plans to see each other made privately between them 

Harry remains enraged that he does not receive around-the-clock police protection during his trips to the UK.

Instead he has to give three weeks’ notice of his visits which are assessed on a ‘case by case’ basis.

Harry’s team originally briefed the Press that he was coming with his wife and children – Meghan has not visited the UK since the Queen’s funeral in September 2022 – but, less than 24 hours later, said he feared for their safety if they came without full-time taxpayer-funded armed police protection and his spokesman said the family would no longer accompany him.

But now Harry’s team are saying that while the family will not travel to London with him there is a chance they may join him during other parts of his UK visit.

It is thought he wants to take his children to his mother Princess Diana’s family home, Althorp, where she is buried on a private island in the middle of a lake.

A source said: ‘Harry longs to bring his children to the UK, to show them where he comes from and to introduce them to their heritage. And he wants to take them to Althorp which is where Diana was raised and where she rests. 

‘It’s important to him that the English side of their heritage is part of their life. But their security is everything. There are real and credible threats and he will not put his family in danger.’

Harry and Meghan had planned to attend other charity events in the UK including a visit to the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London.

Meghan is expected to make her first return to the UK since 2022, accompanied by her children Prince Archie, 7, and five-year-old Lilibet

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It is thought Harry will now attend the London events solo.

The Sussex drama has been going on all week.

The family is currently in Europe, possibly at their holiday villa in Portugal, and had been scheduled to travel together on Monday.

The Mail understands there are tentative plans to see members of the Royal Family, including the King, but in a private capacity with courtiers telling the Sussexes they cannot release any photographs of any reunion.

Prince William and Princess Kate are unlikely to see the Sussexes during their visit.

Meghan and Harry flew to Canada and then the US during Megxit in March 2020 when they stepped down as working members of the royal family.

They live in a £14million mansion in Montecito and friends say both Lilibet and Archie have strong American accents.

Harry has previously said it is his ‘ardent wish’ for his children to know about their British heritage.

Meghan’s jam-making business in the US has not been the roaring success she hoped it would be and their $100million Netflix deal was cancelled last year.

A Netflix source said: ‘They need a strong connection to the UK to be relevant in the US. People only care about the fact that Harry is Diana’s son. Their only currency is their proximity to the Royal Family, certainly as far as America is concerned. They need to maintain their links to the King.’

Harry has long argued that security concerns have prevented him bringing his family to Britain after his taxpayer-funded protection changed – he says he wants his children to visit

Critics have accused Harry of using ’emotional blackmail’ by flip-flopping on his decision about whether to bring his children to the UK.

The King, who is very close to his other grandchildren, has made it clear he would love to see Archie and Lilibet, particularly as he has been fighting cancer.

Harry is due to attend events for WellChild and Scotty’s Little Soldiers during his visit.

The ruling in his case against Associated Newspapers is due on Tuesday, as Harry makes his first speech in the UK. 

He and others accused the Daily Mail of using unlawful means to produce stories, a charge the Daily Mail vehemently denies. 

If he loses the case he could potentially face millions of pounds in legal fees.

Jeff Clark, creative director of The Art of Protest, who say they are changemakers “dedicated to transforming towns cities and communities – one spray can at a time”, spoke to The Press at something of a homecoming York event – AcombFest 26.

Their mission statements emphasise effecting meaningful change through art and culture, collaborating with local authorities and stakeholders, and creating a stronger sense of vision, belonging and identity in public spaces.

Recommended reading:

For three days starting yesterday (Friday, July 3), Front Street, York Road and the wider urban area are transforming into an open-air gallery, blending art, community, and family fun across the west of the city.

Internationally recognised mural artists and multimedia experts are creating live street art, with large-scale pieces transforming the area under the festival’s “return to nature” theme.

Jeff said the business has been around for the last ten years and he has brought this type of event to all parts of the world.

On returning to Acomb he said: “It was really nice to be able to bring it back to my hometown.

“We have been operating in York a long time – as a business we’re placemakers, we’re specialists in that and we use art as a vehicle to communicate.

“For us, to be able to communicate well to the people, to show how community can be created, it’s a real pleasure.

Acomb, I suppose, it’s our home and it’s where most of the team are.

“It’s where a lot of them grew up.”

Curtis Hylton’s work What Flies Above Us is next to the Post Office in York Road (Image: Kevin Glenton)

Jeff said there are times where curators of events like AcombFest could feel like they are being parachuted into a lot of the communities they tranform.

‘I realised without showing people first, you can’t quite get to it’

“We don’t do that, we work with people because we want to art with people not to them as a collective voice, being here long enough to feel the element of change, he said.

“Look around us right now. It’s buzzing and it’s a fair thing to say that we’re changing the viewpoint and also the conception of the place.”

In the build-up to this inaugural event, The Art of Protest visited nine schools and over 1,100 residents of Acomb to give them a flavour of what to expect and listen to what they want.

Hundreds of people have descended on Front Street this morning to take a glimpse at the murals and take part in activities that run from Dansbury Drive to Holgate Road (Image: Kevin Glenton)

He said: “Some people don’t quite understand what you’re doing, and I realised without showing people first, you can’t quite get to it, so the first thing we started to do was to show them different types of art – styles, expressionist details on walls how that works and let them learn a little bit more.

“From that we started to actually get workshops up – the incredible spray paint workshops allow people then to build up layers and work on art and we themed that around animals because that’s what was asked for.

“When we went back, the one thing everyone asked for was ‘returning to nature’.

“Why? Because there’s green spaces people aren’t returning to.

“We sit inside our houses, we stare at screens and we know that nature is good for us but somehow it doesn’t get us excited enough to get out there.

“If we interrupt our landscape with a juxtaposition by painting really well-curated beautiful pieces of art it reminds people that they’re a part of something bigger.”

Jeff Clark hopes AcombFest 26 hopefully is just the start of something.

He said: “What we want to see is the inspiration to move people forward, so hopefully it creates new budding artists of the future.

“And when they walk around this space – there’s paint jams, there’s live exhibitions, there’s so many different things we want the people, and the artists to come forward.

“We want more artists.

“We need to slow down the concept of AI and we need to increase the enjoyment of physically making things, use our dexterity.

“We would like to be here next year and creating art again.”

Emergency services are currently at the scene

Police rushed to an incident on a busy Cambridge road. Emergency services have been spotted this morning at an incident on Hills Road in Cambridge (Saturday, July 4).

Police cars, a critical care car and an ambulance are at the scene of an incident at a building on Hills Road. Local residents have spotted an ambulance and police cars at the scene.

It is not yet clear what the exact nature of the incident is. Cambridgeshire Police have been contacted but the force refused to comment at this stage. Cambridgeshire Live will bring you updates on the incident when we have them.

A Ukrainian drone attack struck an oil terminal in St. Petersburg on Saturday, Russian officials said, as Kyiv presses on with bombardment of Russia’s oil infrastructure.

Almost daily long-range attacks on Russian oil facilities have created a fuel crisis and heaped political pressure on the Kremlin as its all-out invasion of Ukraine stretches into its fifth year.

Gov. Alexander Beglov said the city’s Kirovsky district on the Baltic Sea was hit. He also said that air defenses shot down 72 Ukrainian drones across Russia’s second-largest city and the surrounding region.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as part of Ukraine’s “long-range sanctions” against Russia. He said that Ukrainian forces also hit a military target on the island of Kronstadt, just off the coast of St. Petersburg.

“The Ukrainian defense forces hit the port oil infrastructure, which earns money for the Russian war, and there were also hits on Kronstadt — an important military target,” he said in a post on Telegram.

St. Petersburg’s Kirovsky district was previously hit in June, ahead of Russia’s flagship St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, has suffered particularly from heavy strikes, causing local authorities to suspend gasoline sales to civilians. A Ukrainian attack on Saturday killed one person and injured two more, including a 10-year-old child, the Moscow-installed Gov. Sergei Aksyonov said.

Ukrainian attacks bring the war home

Russian President Vladimir Putin has shrugged off Ukraine’s strikes on Russia’s energy facilities as “not critical,” and insisted the war will continue until his goals are met.

He has described the attacks on Russian energy as an effort by Ukraine to distract attention from its losses on the battlefield, although analysts say the advance of Russian forces has been stymied in recent months.

On Friday, Putin visited the Russian military headquarters directing the war in Ukraine and received a report on the capture of the city of Kostyantynivka, after weeks of intense street battles. He hailed it as a key step toward capturing the nearby cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the key remaining strongholds in the so-called “forest belt” of heavily fortified cities in the Donetsk region that remain in Ukraine’s hands.

The capture of Kostyantynivka, a big transport and industrial hub, is of “major strategic importance,” Putin, clad in military fatigues, said in televised comments.

Putin appears to believe his government can keep the fuel crisis from eroding his authority and support for the war he launched more than four years ago. At the very least, the attacks have brought the war home even more poignantly for millions of Russians, shattering Putin’s narrative of the conflict as something that doesn’t affect the lives of ordinary people in his country.

The border city of Belgorod, which Ukrainian drone strikes have also repeatedly targeted, was left almost completely without power on Saturday due to overnight attacks, local media reported.

Meanwhile, eight people were wounded after a Russian attack struck residential buildings in Ukraine’s southeastern region of Zaporizhzhia, including two children, local authorities said on Saturday.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

A fundraising page set up to support the boy’s recovery and rehabilitation has now raised more than £25,000

A three-year-old boy who was seriously injured after allegedly being thrown into a crocodile enclosure has underwent five surgeries, and faces more, his family has revealed. The incident happened at Johnson’s of Old Hurst, near Huntingdon, on June 18.

The injured boy, who has not been publicly named, underwent “five surgeries” following the incident, and is set to undergo “at least two more surgeries”, his family stated.

A fundraising page set up to support the boy’s recovery and rehabilitation, as well as to provide the family with financial stability while they are “living at the hospital”, has now raised more than £25,000.

In an update from the toddler’s parents, posted on the fundraising page, they said: “We are extremely grateful for everyone’s generosity. We could never thank you enough for the support you have given our family in this horrible time.

“We have been living at the hospital for 2 weeks now and our son has undergone 5 surgeries. At this moment in time we know that our son is to undergo at least two more surgeries, one of those surgeries being a nerve reconstruction in his arm.”

A 30-year-old man from Norfolk was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder following the incident. He has been released on bail after being found not to be fit for interview.

They said these last two weeks have been a “very uncertain and unsettling time” for them. The parents continued: “His rehabilitation journey is uncertain but we do know that it won’t be a short process. The money that has been donated so far has been used to pay for our expenses. We are both currently away from work and the time in which this will need to be the case is unknown.”

The donations have helped to ease the family’s pressure of these expenses and the parents are “extremely grateful” to everyone. Further donations will be used to support the toddler’s rehabilitation and to “give back to the hospital who have helped us in many ways during this challenging time”, they said.

In a statement, Johnsons of Old Hurst said they were “alerted to reports that a child has allegedly been thrown into one of our crocodile enclosures in the Tropical House”. The statement continued: “Everyone who was on site that day acted with incredible speed and determination.

“Within minutes of the first radio call, the child has been rescued from the enclosure and was receiving first aid. The emergency services arrived very quickly, supported by the MAGPAS Air Ambulance, and we cannot thank them enough for their professionalism, compassion and dedication in such difficult circumstances.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Doctors and others are sounding an alarm: More U.S. children have been drowning in recent years.

“When drowning occurs, seconds matter,” said Dr. Rohit Shenoi, the lead author of a recent American Academy of Pediatrics warning. “Quick rescue and resuscitation can mean the difference between life, death and lifelong disability.”

About 4,000 to 5,000 Americans drown each year. Most are adults who die in natural bodies of water, such as lakes, ponds or oceans.

But statistically speaking, drowning is a much larger danger to children. It’s the No. 1 cause of death for kids ages 1 to 4, and one of the top killers of children ages 5 to 14. The drowning rate is higher for white kids in the younger group, but much higher for Black, American Indian and Alaska Native children in the older group.

Drownings of very young children sometimes occur in bathtubs. But most, like Stewie Leonard’s, occur in swimming pools.

A family tragedy leads to a foundation for water safety

The Stew Leonard’s grocery chain offers a Disney-like shopping experience, featuring food-promoting animatronic characters like a dancing banana, a mooing cow and singing avocados. But several of its stores also have an animatronic creature that seems out of place: a life-jacketed duck named Stewie who sings about how not to drown.

The duck is named for the son of Stew Leonard, the grocery chain’s chief executive. The boy was 21 months old when he drowned during a family vacation on the island of St. Martin in 1989.

More than a dozen adults and kids had gathered at a birthday party for Stewie’s older sister, who was turning 3. Stew Leonard was outside hanging balloons and his wife was inside baking a cake.

“I saw Stewie outside and I assumed that he (Leonard) was watching him,” said his wife, Kim, noting that other relatives also were in the area of the pool.

“We never communicated with each other; ‘You’ve got him?’” said Kim Leonard, now 65. “When everyone’s watching, nobody’s watching.”

“There were a couple of balloons floating in the water,” Leonard, 71, recalled. “And you know after a few minutes, sort of everybody was like, ‘Where’s Stewie?’ Unfortunately I was the one who found him. He was face down in the pool.”

His death led the couple to start a foundation that pays for children’s swimming lessons and promotes drowning prevention.

Why are more kids drowning?

Unintentional child drowning deaths in the U.S. fell from around 2,000 a year in the 1980s to below 1,000 a year by the early 2000s, thanks in part to public awareness campaigns, expanded access to swimming lessons, and adoption of pool fencing laws. Between 2000 and 2019, health officials saw a 38% drop.

But then the trend reversed, with the number of child drowning deaths rising from 756 in 2019 to 865 in 2024, the most recent year for which complete data is available. The bulk of them were children younger than 5. The child drowning death rate also increased slightly, from 1.1 to 1.2 per 100,000 children.

What happened?

The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted swimming lessons and lifeguard training programs, and contributed to a national lifeguard shortage. Meanwhile, some data suggests an increase in swimming pool construction and increases in unsupervised swimming, said Tessa Clemens, the CDC Foundation’s senior director for drowning prevention initiatives.

Kym Roberts studies drownings in Australia — where child drownings have been either level or decreasing in recent years. She said “drowning in young children is often associated with falls into water and lapses in direct supervision.”

Some possible good news: Preliminary U.S. data for last year suggests child drownings declined. But it’s not clear whether that’s the start of a trend, and the deaths still remain higher compared to before the COVID-19 pandemic, Clemens said.

Pediatricians push for standards and regulations

Inventors have recognized a need for child water safety measures, and recent years have seen the emergence of immersion alarms that sound if the wristband a child is wearing goes underwater. But manufacturers of such devices note they can serve as an extra warning system, but should not be considered a primary way to keep children safe.

The federal government’s top public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, laid off Clemens and the rest of the staff of its drowning prevention program last year. But new guidance and drowning prevention support continues to come out of other organizations, including the CDC Foundation and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

A CDC Foundation program has paid for basic swimming and water safety skills training for over 35,000 students since 2024. The program operates in 11 states with higher drowning rates: Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Michigan, New York, Oklahoma and Texas.

Ways to prevent drowning

The AAP says research shows that policies can make a difference, including lifeguard standards, life jacket regulations and requirements that swimming pools be completely surrounded by fences with self-closing, self-latching gates.

Stew Leonard emphasizes two other approaches — swimming lessons for young kids and complete focus by caregivers when young children are around water.

“I mean, I love ballet. I love karate. I love tennis lessons. You know, all the activities that kids can do,” he said. “But the only thing you can do to save their life is put them in swimming lessons.”

His foundation has funded over 250,000 swimming lessons for children and opened two swimming schools — one of them across the street from his company’s headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut.

Also, “shut your cellphones off when you’re around the pool, watching the kids. Don’t sit there reading a book. Don’t sit there talking to your friends, neglecting your child that’s near the water,” he said.

“This happens in the blink of an eye.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

First things first, here are the line-ups and stage times for tonight’s two big gigs:

Pitbull at Blackweir Live:

Gates will open at 5pm. Organisers are encouraging attendees to arrive early in order to avoid lengthy queues.

Fuse ODG – 6.15pm

Lil Jon – 7.15pm

DJ Laz – 8.15pm

Pitbull – 8.30pm

Bowling For Soup and Frank Turner at Cardiff Castle:

Doors open for this gig at 5pm.

American Hi-fi – 6.30pm

Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls – 7.25pm

Bowling For Soup – 9.05pm

Wifi on the go is often unreliable – on buses, trains and, increasingly, planes. Whether via cellular or satellite systems, connectivity at speed suffers from highly variable signal coverage and strength. This leads to delays, degraded data speeds and service interruptions.

To address these issues, the UK government has announced a major upgrade to wifi connections on hundreds of intercity trains.

They will use low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems such as Starlink (a subsidiary of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company) and OneWeb (part of the of French Eutelsat group). Operating much closer to Earth than traditional satellites, these systems can provide near-global coverage and higher-speed communications.

So, as LEO networks are rapidly adopted for air, rail, road and maritime transport, how will this change our experience of wifi on the move?

Trains

At present, train wifi largely depends on aggregating terrestrial 4G and 5G signals along each route, with the available bandwidth shared between passengers. As a result, wifi often degrades in rural areas, tunnels and other locations where signal coverage is limited.

Such challenges are even harder on high-speed trains operating at speeds of 150mph (250km/h) and more, with some services in China reaching 220mph.

One technical fix is dedicated trackside communication networks that use advanced technologies to deliver ultra-fast, low-lag connectivity even at such high speeds. But they are still constrained by limited coverage and significant installation costs.

In contrast, LEO satellite systems could offer near-global coverage without requiring costly deployment trackside infrastructure. Following successful trials on LNER, South Western Railway and Great Western Railway services in 2025, the UK government recently announced a £57 million, five-year rollout of LEO satellite connectivity across nationalised mainline rail services.

Up to 1,400 trains will receive satellite-enabled connectivity, with onboard wifi availability increasing from around half of UK train journeys up to 90% by the early 2030s.

Integrating LEO systems with existing terrestrial wifi networks should combine the strengths of both technologies. When one link becomes unavailable or degrades, alternative connections can seamlessly take over, reducing service interruptions and improving the reliability and quality of onboard wifi.

Planes

Since German airline Lufthansa introduced the first commercial in-flight internet service in January 2003, wifi on planes has expanded rapidly.

Today, approximately 70% of airlines worldwide offer onboard internet connectivity. Their wifi is provided either by air-to-ground or satellite communication systems.

Air-to-ground systems use an antenna mounted on the plane’s underside to connect to a network of land towers. While this approach ensures relatively low delays, coverage is limited to regions with terrestrial infrastructure so is unsuitable for most oceanic routes.

The preferred option for long-haul and transoceanic flights is using an antenna mounted on top of the aircraft to communicate with satellites. But maintaining reliable inflight connectivity remains challenging due to rapidly changing conditions and frequent satellite handovers at high speed (upwards of 500mph).

Climbs, descents and turbulence can all disrupt an antenna’s alignment with satellites. Continuous satellite tracking and antenna steering is needed to maintain accurate beam alignment throughout the flight.

In recent years, LEO satellite systems have accelerated midair wifi provision, in some cases delivering “superfast” inflight internet speeds exceeding 100 megabits per second. With signals travelling up to 3,000 miles, though, transmission delays are still unavoidable.

As technologies such as electronically steered antennas and AI-driven network management mature and satellite capacity continues to expand, onboard wifi should become comparable to terrestrial broadband for most passengers. This will enable in-flight video streaming and cloud-based services with minimal disruption.

Buses

Many long-distance coaches use roof-mounted antennas with onboard routers to share a cellular connection among their passengers. Wifi performance thus depends heavily on mobile network coverage and capacity, and can degrade in rural areas, tunnels, or simply when the coach is full.

Connectivity has been enhanced with the transition from 4G to 5G networks. However, since coach and bus wifi relies on a shared cellular connection, passengers often have a better experience using their own mobile connectivity.

This means wifi provision on local bus services has slowed in recent years. In 2025, 13% of buses in England offered free wifi, down from a peak of 32% in 2020.

On rural and long-distance routes, where mobile coverage is limited or unavailable, reliable wifi can be essential not only for passengers but for operational services such as ticketing and CCTV.

With LEO satellite networks emerging as a promising solution, several UK bus and coach initiatives – including trials by Transport for Wales from 2024 – are exploring hybrid 5G-satellite systems. These can seamlessly switch between cellular and satellite links to reduce coverage blackspots and provide more consistent connectivity along rural routes.

Ferries

Ferries and cruise ships operating more than a few tens of kilometres from land rely on satellite communications. These have evolved from low-bandwidth systems used primarily for safety, navigation and crew communications in the 1980s and ’90s, to broadband passenger wifi services supported by geostationary satellites orbiting around 22,000 miles above the Earth.

Maintaining stable satellite communication at sea is particularly challenging. Ships roll, pitch and yaw because of the waves and wind. This can misalign satellite antennas, leading to performance degradation and temporary communication interruptions.

Harsh maritime conditions including salt corrosion, high humidity and heavy rainfall can also damage electronic devices, reducing the strength of high-frequency satellite signals.

Furthermore, the ship’s large steel structure can cause signal degradation and coverage dead zones. This makes onboard wifi provision especially difficult on large cruise ships with multiple decks, thick walls and narrow corridors.

LEO satellite technology has, however, significantly improved wifi provision at sea. As of 2025, more than 25,000 commercial and passenger vessels worldwide were using LEO satellite broadband services, primarily through Starlink.

And as with other modes of transport, this rate of adoption is projected to continue increasing rapidly. The prospect of seamless wifi coverage, whichever way you travel, should soon be a reality.