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First UK On-Train WiFi Service Launches Monday
dave writes "UK train company GNER starts trials of the UK's first on-train wireless Internet access service. Currently only available on limited services and in First Class; if the trial is successful the service will be rolled out across the entire fleet in both Standard and First Class."
...was making the first class coaches into Faraday Cages so the dweebs in Stanard Class couldn't snag some airtime.
I can also see some desparate geek trying to download his e-mail -- while zipping along at 100 kph in his car, parallel to the train.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
in the UK is not the lack of wifi, it's that I never arrive at my destination on time, as there's always delays for some reason. Don't try to run before you can walk, eh.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
"when the train passes through a tunnel, 4-6 cellular phone links are used in parallel to maintain the Internet connection, and even if the speed decreases temporarily, the connection will entirely not drop."
Just a shame that GNER don't actually operate this far West in the UK.
Not having a laptop is probably going to be an issue as well, I suppose.
--
Windows XP. From the people who brought you Edlin.
I've seen one go by while I was at the train station on day waiting for the commuter train but it was going by a bit too quickly for me to try to grab a connection with my axim x3i :P
What's wrong with going with wifi because its cheaper?
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Its unfortunate that this is currently only available in one carriage, one would imagine that the expensive bit is the satellite uplink (assuming this is how they do it, although I saw GSM mentioned somewhere), distributing the wireless within the train should be the easy bit.
I will guarantee you if you put ethernet ports out, within hours they will be plugged with chewing gum. Its just the way people are. Most of us are pure pigs. Talk to any custodian of a public place if you don't believe me.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
on a standard rate ticket the train cars are massively over packed during commuter periods. thankfully the gner routes are not as popular as the ones in the south and south-east.
that this has happened at all is a nice and due to competition from virgin trains who operate on the western main line up and down the country, who offer laptop and mobile charging, etc. on your journey for a business class ticket. they operate their trains more like they operate their airlines than the other rail operators. it is true that i'd like to see this service offered across the board for the entire train network eventually by the majority of operators.
since privatisation (the railways used to be pubically owned) the responsibility for the track network and the train operators has been split leading to more massive accidents than ever before. imagine if the internet was run by idiot companies with no idea about how to run a network with all the isp's just putting more traffic over a poor backbone infrastructure that was already in place, with little or no investment in that infrastructure, with all the maintainence work contracted out to the cheapest sub-contractor.
WiFi is fine, but packing 200 passengers into a small train carriage and allowing each to use a WiFi transmitter is just stupid.
Not as stupid as packing 200 passengers into a small train carriage that has CAT5 cabling trailing everywhere!
I recall reading about Amtrak working with yahoo to provide net access on the trains.. I don't know if it panned out, and google searches just come up with old articles. Anyone know what happened?
Looking now, I see that the local train is testing wifi on certain routes.
Now maybe people will send "I'm on the train" emails, instead of forcing the whole carriage to listen to one half of your mobile phone conversation.
There are 64 seats in First class and 86 in Standard. There will have to be at least one access point per carriage. The amount of simultaneous access will be limited. My experience of the number of people with laptops and pda's, even on a busy morning train is probably about 20 at most. I don't see that as much of an issue. I'm sure their going to have to throttle people's bandwidth to stop anyone hogging the uplink. Sure Ethernet is better but wifi is more convenient. Anyway, less of the killjoy stuff, I use GNER all the time and GPRS coverage is patchy and expensive. So a good improvement.
http://www.linx.no/default.aspx?id=2096
30 seconds at a time, several times a day, that is. "The 14:55 from Aberdeen's coming, get ready to hit reload!"
I'd be interested to know how the expect to get DSL-level bandwith from GSM technology, especially when more than one person will be using the line.
Also, in my experience public WIFI providers tend to charge an arm and a leg for the service. I'm sure the trial is free, but I can't see it remaining that way when the role the service out to "standard class". 1 per email, anyone ?
i think the wireless route is a poor one to follow anyways. how many years will it be before theres more people wanting to use the internet access than wifi can handle? cat5, however, is still going to be around for a long while, espically since you can do gigabit ethernet over the cabling.
There is no conclusive evidence that WiFi is hazardous. Cellphones put out 10x more power, and even being so close to your head, they only raise the cell temperatures by .01 degress, which is nothing. Having forty people using WiFi (which is improbable) will not have adverse health effects.
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Sounds like a desperate attempt to upsell seats in first class to me. I doubt if it's going to work because you're either willing to pay thru the nose for a special seat or you're not, how does better internet access make a difference? I already can and do get an adequate bluetooth/GPRS connection anyway, even in economy class.
Also the UK train system does not have a particularly good record for efficiency, they really struggle with the retailing computers in the snack-bar so why do I not have a good feeling about their ability to operate a satellite link. Personally I would put "not crashing" at the top of my train wish-list instead of wi-fi.
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Here is a link (PDF). Sorry it's in French but I can't find one in English. Here is the Google translation of the HTML version.
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The technology for this is provided by Icomera. There are some more data about what their technology does, though not really much about how it works. Their speciality seems to be "Seamless Handover" between the different types of network connection.
If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
Bullshit. CAT5 is cheap, but how much do you think it costs for Mr Cable Man to get on a train, be on time, just to repair one peice of cut cable? WiFi, while bad when flooded with lot's of laptops, is much much better for public places.
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I operate an open node not more than 150 metres from a major railway bridge over the GNER - not seen any signs of a connection (yet) :)
COnsidering that this is GNER, the net will probably be faster than the train.
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
And on polish trains, there's even no electricity in 220V sockets. :( ...and they complain railways are unprofitable here.
not to mention bathrooms working maybe in 20% cases.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Your physics teacher is an idiot for believing in anything other than what is observable and testable, which does not include "energy" fields that acupuncture taps into. Science doesn't believe in "energy fields" or "feng shui" even if others may.
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"The nine-*crackle* packets from *garble* will now be arriving at platform *mumble*."
What would be really cool is access to a real-time train map like the controllers see, then you can see the real reason your train just stopped in the middle of no-where for 15 mins with no explination. Also - and i dont think transportation people have really caught on to this fact: things always seem faster when you have a moving progress bar on a screen (it has to move every second). People want to be able to see whats going on and when - thats why people like the count-down displays at bus stops and on the tube.
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Never mind the connection speed varying - we're all gonna die !
It's completely factual and messing around plumbing wifi in British trains smacks of re-arranging the deckchairs while the Titanic sinks.
To really enjoy this train wifi, we need a LAN Game protocol designed for publically used WiFi locations. This would let people publish a list of which games they might like to play and support connectinons to others. Any LAN-playable game would need some type of plugin that provides information about how to connect to other (i.e., a Chess app would only let one other person connect, an MMORG would define which scenarios different people want to play, etc.) That way the person in car 2 could find a game buddy in car 4 without any prearrangements with that person.
I see only two problems. The first is security. Depending on who programs the protocol, it could end up with exploits. Also, the games might provide a channel for exploits if someone uses a hacked copy of Doom to insinuate themselves into another rider's laptop. The second problem would be playability when the person in car 3 decides to use the 5 hour journey to download the latest Linux distro.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
This is a great step forwards.
People will complain about late or cancelled trains but the fact is that no journey is every fast enough if you're not enjoying yourself, and no journey is too slow if you're having a good time.
The question therefore is: will on-board internet links make life better or worse for travellers? And the answer is obviously "yes".
With a notebook and wifi, even long waits are entirely bearable and can be fun. I'd rather a four-hour train journey with wifi than a two hour flight without.
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Sometimes I wish I'd finished 3rd grade so I could finish sentences correctly. Well, I meant "yes, better". Usually I flame my own posts when I find obvious errors in them. You beat me to it.
Back to the story, I think trains, planes, airports and terminals are about the only places where WiFi has a real future, where there is a captive market with notebooks and money to spend on keeping up to date with their latest Slashdot karma.
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Actually the Surfliner, which runs between Goleta and San Diego, is another major profit center for Amtrak. So much so that during the time that it looked like the Bush administration was going to kill Amtrak Caltrans was absolutely drooling over the possibility of raking in those Surfliner revenues without having to split it with Uncle Sam.
The Surfliner has two classes: Coach and Business. Business class costs $9 each way and includes a newspaper, a snack box and more comfortable seats. On a particularly crowded Summer day, sometimes it's worth it to spring for the extra $18 to get some elbow room. 802.11b would make it even more worth it. Amtrak should definitely consider this.
Oh yeah, when you are dealing with a metal box (which is what a train is) you already have a Faraday Cage. It's highly unlikely that the hoi polloi in the cheap seats could get any signal leaking in from Business Class.
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Of course, in these days of crashes and litigation, they daren't go faster than about 100mph in practice.
Either way, you wouldn't be able to keep up in a car.
if they set it up right, then they wouldnt need a cable man to replace it. have a regular sided cable with a jack on each end. plug one end into a port on the train, and then seal that end off with a key. the other end hangs freely. whenever a cable gets cut, damn near any train employee can simply unlock, unplug, plug in a new cable, and lock again.
GNER does use some diesels. They run a few trains north of Edinburgh to Aberdeen or Inverness, and there's no electric lines north of Edinburgh/Glasgow. I get the Inverness bound one fairly regularly.
The availablity of this service may have serious consequences for the UK wardriver community.
I can see now swathes of Wardrivers being killed at the wheel while driving in excess of 110mph trying to maintain the "perfect signal" they just aquired.
Oh the dark times ahead....
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
this web comic it mentions gaming in trains to pass the time
i am the self-proclaimed king of free stuff
I don't think considering the bandwidth available today is a valid projection for whats gonna happen 5 years from now. Not in this industry. I see no physical limitation here - its not like my bandwidth is dependent on some physical constant which I am powerless to change, rather its dependent on technology and protocols.
I don't think we've even begun to touch the potential of wireless technologies. I am sure as the needs arise, we will devise techniques for obtaining as much bandwidth as we need. Within a local area, we physically have the entire EM spectrum at our disposal.
As far as those cables go, anything accessible to the public is going to be a maintenance nightmare. And equally frustrating to the public who will be forced into a position to jockey for who gets the seat with the operable connection. For this, I do not wired connections are a good idea.
Incidentally, are the trains wired to power said laptops?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
A lot less than 30 seconds. The train will cover 1 miles in that time.
There is little chance to see the A1 in England.
So the "A1" that runs northwards from London is a complete figment of my imagination?! I wish the same could be said for the traffic jams on it!
Back on topic-ish, there's a section of the M1 in the outskirts of London that runs parallel to a major line. The cars and trains seem to travel at about the same speed in that section so I suppose there's a chance of some (very dangerous) bandwidth theft.
Why would they waist their time on this when WiMax is within 6 months of deploying? Is that too soon a reality? Hey Hey is anyone else interested in 802.16 & 802.20? "A man hears what he wants to hear & disregards the rest"{Simon & Garfunkel 196?}-- I guess
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