UK Trains Take WiFi Route To Connectivity

Randy Sparks writes "The BBC is reporting that one of the UK's largest train operators, GNER, is to offer Wi-Fi net access on its trains. What's interesting is how this net connection will be achieved - by a combination of networks provided by multiple mobile phone connections or even digital TV Internet, provided from ground stations the train passes by. It'll cost UKP4.95 per hour for train goers, although First Class Travellers will get it free..."

Comments

Oblig Jokes

[beacher]

Quake players and their rail guns...
Tunnelling
Rail driving?
Say, didn't you just hit a badger? There goes our proxy server!

Great!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when sitting in a three hour delay you can at least do some browsing.

mmorpg addicts dreams are coming true!

[sh2kwave]

Finally it seems i will be able to achieve my goals of playing my mmorpg charectors no matter where i go.

I can see it now "sorry sir you cant take that see i need it for my 3rd laptop which has my cleric on it, plz leave me along the mobs gonna spawn soon"

Cheap WiFi

[prat393]

Make sure you sit next to the first class car! You just might get free access. "Warsitting", perhaps?

Re:Cheap WiFi

[canavan]

I'd suspect that some sort of access credentials will be printed on the tickets, so you may have to go dumpster diving instead - or just ask someone who's not going to use it anyway.

Re:Cheap WiFi

[DrSkwid]

Nothing more required than a bit of knowledge and experience.

here's the tools

Re:Cheap WiFi

[VertigoAce]

That'd be great if these systems were encrypted, but they generally aren't. I know the Dallas/Fort Worth airport has two wireless internet access services (T-Mobile and something else). You can pull out your laptop and connect to them immediately, but any requests bring you to an info page. One of the services let you find out tourist information along with airport info (flight info, services, etc) for free. To get access to the rest of the net you have to pay. It probably uses some sort of software firewall that keeps track of your IP and mac addresses. Normal WiFi hacking isn't going to do you much good in this case.

Its GBP!

[Krik Johnson]

Why do people keep giving us the wrong currency symbol? GBP is the international standard code for pounds, not UKP! For another thing, slashdot dosen't allow pound signs either. Stupid stuck in 1997 website deisgn that dosen't even have valid HTML 3.2!

Re:Its GBP!

[Zocalo]

Probably for the same reason that we use ".uk" as our ccTLD despite the "official" ISO standard being GB - because the average joe in the street uses "UK" in preference to "GB". As do the media and the government for that matter. The only common place we use the "GB" ISO code I can think of is on those stickers that go on cars travelling abroad.

Also, bear in mind that the full name of this green and pleasant land is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Given that the "GBP" is also the currency of Northern Ireland, "UKP" is actually more accurate.

Re:Its GBP!

[DrSkwid]

My Passport is for

"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"

Code of Issuing State : GBR

Nationality : British Citizen

Please note, fingerprinting yankees, that it also says :

Her Britanic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.

You'd better watch out, we'll be sending some Royal Guards to sort you out!

Re:Its GBP!

[rikkus-x]

Official ISO standard for what? Great Britain is an island. The United Kingdom is a country. Northern Ireland is a province, England and Scotland are Kingdoms, Wales is a principality.

People usually talk in terms of countries, so what are the ISO people using Great Britain for, I wonder?

Rik

Re:Its GBP!

[NickFitz]

'Great Britain' is a geographical area including some (but not others) of the islands that are near the main island on which England sits.

Not quite.

Great Britain is, as you say, a geographical term, but it refers to the largest island of the British Isles - the one comprising the majority of the landmass of England, Wales and Scotland. The British Isles also include Ireland, containing Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as all the smaller places like the Isle of Man, the Shetlands, and so forth . The name of the country (i.e. the political entity, or state) often referred to as Great Britain is actually called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Personally, I usually refer to my homeland as Britain, as even though it's the greatest country in the world, that isn't saying very much when you consider the competition in this hellhole of a human-vermin-infested planet. Damned by faint praise about sums it up.

Re:Its GBP!

[nickos]

The "other one" is called hash - The jargon file says "The pronunciation of '#' as 'pound' is common in the U.S. but a bad idea ... The character is usually pronounced "hash" outside the US."

Re:Its GBP!

[Pippinjack]

The Great in Great Britain isn't to do with world stature, it's there to distinguish it from Britanny as in Bretagne and Grand Bretagne.

Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Snover]

Excuse me for being so grossly ignorant of the workings of such things, but why don't they either use broadband-over-power and then have wifi routers within the compartments or send the traffic through the rails, rather then try to aim satellites at things? Seems silly to create a new infrastructure when the existing one can be used.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[samael]

Seen the huge sparks that fly about whenever a train goes over even slightly mismatched power rails?

I suspect that there would be altogether too much interference.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[weave]

There's also the minor fact that not too much of the rail lines are electrified to consider!

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[linuxci]

But not all of the line is electrified, GNER services from Edinburgh to Aberdeen and Inverness are still run using diesel trains as there's no power lines north of Edinburgh. I suspect this is because the main Scottish rail operatior, ScotRail, doesn't have any plans to introduce electric trains so GNER need to make do as well for this part of the route

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Timo_UK]

So they took the bike from in front of the station (because it might contain a bomb) and put it on a train instead? Very clever ;-))

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Orlando]

or send the traffic through the rails

You obviously don't live in England. The rail infrastructure is so bad they have enough problems getting the trains to run on the rails let alone network traffic.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[Late]

If we ignore the fact that only part of the tracks are electrified, broadband over power does not work over high voltage. It is only designed to work on relatively low power wires from the closest switching station to a house. Even in these conditions the power has to be cleaned of interference as much as possible. Overhead train power is (in this case) 25 000 V AC. It is not particularily clean and the connection from the wire to the pantograph is the absolute opposite of clean. Although the rails are not powered, they are grounded as they are the ground point for the electrification so they are very much a part of the same mess.

There isn't much chance of moving anything along the rails. Train tracking and control uses either a balise (an antenna between the rails) and an antenna under the train or a radio network. The future European Train Control System is designed to use a special version of GSM called GSM-R for communication. It would probably be possible to run an antenna along the side of the rails. This is how they make GSM work in metro systems at least in Helsinki. But this gets as back to the original point of using existing infrastructure.

Re:Through the rails or over the power lines?

[BeerCat]

Some local train services and the London Underground use a third rail to carry power while the Intercity system and some other local train services use overhead cables, as do most (all?) of the tram type systems.

Just to clarify:
South of the River Thames (and near Liverpool), 750v (or sometimes 630v) DC is used from a third rail. Elsewhere, rail electrification is 25kv AC overhead lines. The London Underground is 660v DC using a third rail for current and a fourth rail for return. Light rail systems typically use 1500v DC on the overhead, except for the Docklands Light Railway, which is 750v DC from an upside down 3rd rail (the collector is underneath, rather than on top)

All clear?
I thought not.
Still, at Stratford, east London, there is 2-rail (25kv), 2 lots of 3-rail (750v and DLR), 2 lots of 4 rail (Central and Jubilee lines), so you can see for yourself. If you want. Maybe. Possibly.

Dupe

[Inda]

I call dupe.

November 30th, 2003.

First UK On-Train WiFi Service Launches Monday

Re:Dupe

[linuxci]

I posted that original article, that was when the GNER service was a trial, now it appears the trial was successful and will be rolled out in the entire fleet.

GNER is the only decent train company in the UK, it's the only one that still offers a smoking carriage, it gives regular travellers a loyalty card like many airlines do, in has a proper restaurant service and I've not had too many problems with their timekeeping.

The only thing I can say bad about them is that they used to sell bottled real ales in the buffet car, but they stopped doing those October last year, now you've got only canned mainstream beers which ain't the same. GNER are usually good at listening to feedback so if you're a regular traveller and miss the guest ales then email them and let them know. Vist www.gner.co.uk and click on the 'contact us' link, then select customer relations.

This seems better than GPRS

[karikasper]

Here in Estonia we have GPRS-based connection in trains. Haven't tried it myself, but I've been told it's quite slow and sluggish.

Re:This seems better than GPRS

[s7uar7]

Rather like our UK trains then.

Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Thats about 8USD to you! No suprises that the pricing is expensive, rail travel is more expensive than air travel in the UK sometimes!

Excellent

[vedli]

This is really great news. When I go and visit my girlfriend in Edinburgh I have to do without an Internet connection for up to 3 hours; clearly far too long for anyone :-) With regards wireless networks in general, I know that when wi-fi network cards are in ad hoc mode you can stumble across other cards in ad hoc mode but is there any way to communicate with them? For example, not only being able to tell another card is present, but ask the owner of the card if they want a game of Quake?

Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :)

[Wacky_Wookie]

Why not buy up a whole carriages worth of space and set up your office on a train going between say, Bristol and london, or Manchester? Sure beats sitting in an office all day. If you worked the shifts out correctly, your staff would have a choice between living in two citys (or any stop in between).

Of course that bring up the obvious joke:
In Soviet Russia, the office commutes to YOU!

I think the view from a moving train would be much nicer then a static office window anyday!

Re:Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :)

[Wacky_Wookie]

GNER don't operate in Bristol, or Manchester... Bristol is on the West Coast line which is Virgin Trains territory.

Ya, I know, I live in London.

But the BBC commented on the fact that other Operators were going to interduce the same survice soon. If Branson fails to get the same thing added to Virgin's trains with-in six months of GNER doing it, I'll send my e-mail address to the top five spammers :)

I was not intending for my comment to be Moded funny anyway, I was hoping that the idea of moblie offices would actualy spark some interest, but it looks like most people took it as mobile SPAM offices, and i only ment that to be a humerious title.

A whole new spectrum of excuses

[JosKarith]

"We're sorry this train is late, but there are the wrong type of interleaves on the pipe..."
(For the benefit of those who don't have the pleasure of living in the wettest place on earth British Railways used 'Wrong leaves on the track' as an excuse for late/cancelled trains for years...)

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[Fernando Pessoa]

Actually, this is an amalgam of 2 different excuses:

"Leaves on the line"

and

"The wrong kind of snow".

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[AGMW]

... and shortly after the "leaves on the track" incident, there was a case down in Kent somewhere where some guys had robbed a sub-post office and been chased onto the tracks by the police. The announcement came of the tannoy ...

"We apologies for the late running of the 07:25 service to London Bridge. This is due to thieves on the line."

Laugh! I nearly got to work on time.

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[drunkahol]

Acutally that excuse was only used a handfull of times. It's become folklore now - so people bring it up all the time.

The problem came about when they switched the brakes to using disk brakes rather than clamping the outer edge of the wheel. The clamping action would help scrape the leaf mulch off the wheels so the wheels were clean to grip the track. The leaf mulch couldn't be cleaned off when the disk brakes were used.

As for the wrong kind of snow, it's more that the de-icer was sprayed on the tracks - then the temperature rose and it started raining and washed off the de-icer - then the temperature dropped and the rain froze on the tracks. Odd circumstances, but you can easily understand how it happens!

Dunk

Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses

[NickFitz]

Some years ago, I was on a train whose conductor explained in great detail why we were going to sit at Nuneaton for an hour, finishing with:

"Once again, we apologise for this delay, which is due solely to the incompetence of the driver."

Thames Trains Reading to Paddington has this

[mccalli]

Can confirm that I've noticed testing going on for this. On my morning commute from Maidenhead station into Paddington (on the Reading route) my Powerbook has been picking up a wireless network called 'TEST' for a few months now.

Cheers,
Ian

Expensive. VERY.

[superhoe]

5 GBP PER HOUR?! Here we go again..

Rapidly increasing network access on-the-go is a really cool thing. I was excited and waiting for it when it was first announced.

Now I've already got over my disappointment - f.ex. GPRS service is charged based on traffic here, and it's damn expensive. 100 megabytes and if you exceed that, it's 2 euros/megabyte. So, what's 100 mb/month good for? Definitely not for using graphical WWW on Opera's mobile version. Well, I then check my emails with GPRS. Same thing I could do with GSM data previously, phh.. Dunno, people all around seems to be generally richer than me because they are eagerly waiting for this new EDGE thing to come and increase transfer speeds to 200k or so.

I'm not waiting for it eagerly - correct me if I'm wrong - at least in Europe, it's most likely going to feature similar stupid pricing which renders it useless to most non-corporate users. I'll join the hype about wireless access on-the-go at the very day when I can afford to use it effectively.

Re:Expensive. VERY.

[jamesangel]

I suspect that paying services like this will dry up quickly, due to competition from other ways of access/forms of transport and the growing expectation that WiFi should be provided like light or bathrooms - free.

Here in Paris, about three months ago I noticed that lots of cafes were offering WiFi at a similar rate to this. A couple of months later, and the same places have given up and offer it for free. It started out as a premium service, then became a nice perk to have, and soon it will be an expectation everywhere.

Re:Expensive. VERY.

[sir_cello]

I think you need a lecture on economics 101.

It's not that expensive: you've obviously never left home and backpacked: I've been to cybercafe's all around Europe, and although the prices are better now, about 4-5 years ago, 5GBP per hour would have at the upper limit, but not considered expensive.

You should also read up on economics while you're at it: of course GPRS and related services are expensive: have you seen how much it costs to develop, rollout and manage the technology? It's a lot more than simply providing dialup 56K access. Companies have to return a profit so they can pay their workers and provide for their shareholders, and therefore keep all us in houses and with future pensions.

Same in this case: installing and managing the wifi service actually costs money, so it's generally a good business model that you try and reclaim some of that back: the train company isn't a charity for rolling out new technologies.

I appreciate your concerns, we all do: everyone wants to see future technologies come into use at good prices, but reality is a little different: it takes a while for it to all roll in and the prices to reduce.

I'm waiting for someone to introduce standard response templates to /.: we can all say time educating people like yourself and just throw you an intro to "economics and how the world goes around".

Re:Expensive. VERY.

[Gossy]

100 megabytes and if you exceed that, it's 2 euros/megabyte. So, what's 100 mb/month good for? Definitely not for using graphical WWW on Opera's mobile version.

You think that's bad?

I pay GBP25/mo on O2's online offpeak 500 tariff.

I get ... 0.5MB of GPRS included! GBP2.35 / MB if I go over that.

How do they expect such technologies to seriously take off at such extortionate prices? I could probably download my email once with that amount of inclusive transfer..

nice idea but...

[kefa]

I currently use GPRS extensively on trains (admittedly in the London area where reception is relatively good) with no real speed issues. I'd be hard pushed to spend 4.95 GBP on GPRS connection charges during a typical journey.

Already have this for free in Scandinavia

[Zo0ok]

On the train service from Copanhagen to Gothenburg (Oslo) we already have WiFi - free of charge (-:

Priorities

[Cleggmeister]

However, it was also announced this morning that major operators have deferred the safety recommendations made following a major rail crash some years ago. An independent inquiry recommended the installation of digital radios to help prevent drivers overshooting red signals. This announcement from the operators means that the recommendations will not be actioned until 14 years after the inquiry published its findings. To rub salt into that wound, there is also involvement from OfCom (UK communications regulator) over the sharing of such frequencies, with concerns that such radios may operate on similar frequencies to public access services. And the goveernment seem surprised that its public are reticent to give up their private cars?!

Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere?

[CGP314]

I don't know that much about how the technology works, but it seems to me that there is almost 0 new infrastructure necessary -- but everywhere I go in London, WiFi is outrageously expensive. Can someone with more technological knowledge than I explain this? Perhaps I'm missing some cost, but it seems to me that if they charged 1GBP/hour people would use it without thinking. But, when the cost is higher than the minimum wage, second thoughts arise.


-Colin

Re:Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere?

[Cleggmeister]

It is not disputed that these costs are prohibitive to the "public at large", however I would guess that the majority of users would be corporate, hence offset the costs via expenses. This, unfortunately, is indicative of the UK comms industry. Only of late are the providers packaging their products for domestic consumers as opposed to corporate users. Maybe in five years time the UK will have reached the level that most developed countries already enjoy.

Re:Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere?

[mikeb]

It's expensivce at present because people are willing to pay it.

I don't think it will be long before we end up with a model where enterprising pub and cafe owners figure that at about 25/month (dollars, pounds whatever) for an ADSL link they can give their customers semi-free wifi access and compete for the road warrior trade.

They won't be able to make it unmetered, but the likely scenario is where you buy a coffee and get given a voucher for 1MB/15 minutes access ... my guess is that the hotspot market will migrate to that kind of thing with a few years and just about anywhwere public will have some kind of modest-cost wifi access.

Used it last november

[tomrud]

I tried this (or similar) on the train from Stockholm to Karlstad last november.

I got i little box with an antenna and connected my ethernet port to the box. I got an IP-address via DHCP, but I'm sorry, I didn't check if it was a public or a NAT-address.

Anyway, I got full Internet access as far as I could tell. I could create a SSH-tunnel to my work and use it to read my email (and to do anything I usually do through SSH. It was a little bit slow, thou. I had urgent things to do for my employer, so I didn't have the time to really explore it's limits.

It didn't have any stupid requirements for operating system and was usable with my GNU/Linux laptop.

You can find some (commercial) information about it here: http://www.linx.se/templates/Page.aspx?id=3108

Great for British Trains

[L-s-L69]

As you can post your complaint as you sit in the delay. Cant wait for Virgin to get this, I could invite the entire carridge to complain with me.

They're not the first.

[Sandman1971]

This isn't news. Via Rails here in Canada has been offering wi-fi on Via 1 trains on the Montréal-Toronto or Montréal-Québec City routes here for months on a trial basis.

The cost

[Mr_Silver]

It'll cost UKP4.95 per hour for train goers

Given that your battery will go flat after no more than two hours, it's only going to cost you about a tenner anyway :o)

Of course i'm ignoring the fact you might have a spare battery - but also I think that Virgin Trains are the only ones at the moment to offer power points in their trains. First class only.

Wardriiving, the cheaper way to go

[Skevin]

I started thinking about how the railway could save money...

"Ladies and Gentlemen using our wire internet service: this is your conductor speaking, and I would like to inform you than in approximately five seconds, you will need to change your wireless settings - essid is 'linksys', channel 7, IP range is-... Oh, bugger! It appears we are entering the range of another access point, so let me consult our wardriving records... Here we are: essid is 'elizabeth', channel 11, and-... oh dear, we've just left the range of *that* access point as well. In any case, the farmhouse we are currently passing has the following settings..."

Solomon Chang

Pah! IP over trains protocol is the way to go

[91degrees]

You'll get much better bandwidth if you simply take the data by train. Even with the delays inherent in English rail.

All very good, however

[youngerpants]

I have to do a lot of travelling for work, I have used WiFi hotspots almost everywhere I needed it, but whenI have used my laptop on trains before using GPRS, and I think this is a great move and a step in the right direction.

However, the one area where this always falls over is with power. Our batteries are just don't last long enough. I have a brand new Dell D600 (finally gave up on my Thinkpad T21) and the battery will give me 1 - 1.5 hours max.

As long as the trains also offer power outlets so I can keep the charge going I'd happily pay for the connectivity

Re:All very good, however

[Echnin]

Whose batteries don't last lost enough? My iBook goes for about 4 hours when surfing, chatting and mailing using WiFi.

Oh, and the trains do have power outlets anyway. :p

Brand Communications

[AndIWonderIfIWonder]

At the WLAN event in London on the 6-7 April, this is exactly what Brand Communications said they are going to be doing. In fact a quick look around their website turned up this press release from 1st December giving some details.

The press release states "The latest trials were held on route between Edinburgh and London Kings Cross and achieved realistic data rates and speeds, with over 18 GigaBytes of data being sent to and from the train."

I got the impression from the people on the stand that they will be using WiMax to get the signal to the train passengers, and then standard 802.11b inside the carriages.

If it all works out it should make train journeys a bit more interesting, but there goes my excuse to get out of doing any work.

Rail travel is often more expensive...

[blorg]

...than flying with the likes of Ryanair who often do free or 0.99p deals. The train however goes from city centre to city centre, rather than circa 1 hour outside each city; I'm thinking London Stansted to "Glasgow" (Prestwick) here. When you factor in taxes and the exorbitant cost of the Stansted Express it's not always so cheap any more.

Fast rail travel (like they have on the European continent) is far more comfortable than flying. When you factor in airport distance, check-in times, etc, it's also quicker than flying on most domestic-length routes. Look at Eurostar's dominance on the London-Paris route at the expense of the airlines. It's also far more environmentally friendly than short-haul flights - in Spain you can get a discount on an AVE/Talgo ticket within 48 hours of flying into/out of the country, to persuade you to use the train rather than a connecting flight to your ultimate destination.

Offering WiFi is definately another value-add that will increase train use - you can actually spend that 4-5 hour journey *working* (or whatever) rather than spending approx the same amount of time getting a train to the airport, check-in, hanging around, short flight, another train. Now if they can only get those leaves off the track and introduce high speed services...

Fave Excuse

[pklong]

My favorate excuse heard on the british train system for delayed trains is "exploding pigeons".

Apparently London Kingscross Thameslink stations overhead lines are very close to the roof and a pigeon flying between the roof and the lines can shorten the gap just enough for the electricity to arc across the gap.

Noooooo!

[empaler]

Now they can actually make money by being late! The horror! Now they have incentive!

hehe

[miruku]

"According to telecoms analysts BWCS, 625 million people worldwide will be travelling on wi-fi enabled trains within the next five years"

and

"A radio system for train drivers recommended after the Paddington rail crash has been delayed by five years. The digital radio network was to be introduced on the rail network in 2008.

But the system, allowing signallers to speak to a number of drivers at the same time, will not be ready until 2013 - 14 years after the crash."

so 5 years for wi-fi, 9 years for adiquite saftey? nice one

Links

[linuxci]

Just for more info:
GNER press release
GNER WiFi site
The full rollout hasn't commenced yet but you can find out which trains are already running with WiFi

The on board menu

Re:Twats

[theOtherFool]

Shame the root post was modded Flamebait, I'm inclined to agree. Virgin are a prime example of massively inappropriate spending: when their trains were running more and more crowded and their punctuality was getting worse, what did they do? Rather than ACTUALLY spending cash on more trains, they replaced the existing stock with trains which are more cramped and have less setas and carriages. But at least they have power points and push buttons to open doors and look like planes! Nice one Virgin.

With train fares as pricey as they are, I'd like to see my cash going into improvements in service and networks, rather than cosmetic improvements.

Yawn.

[Pig Hogger]

Old hat. VIA Rail Canada has been offering wireless for almost a year...

Review of the experience

[TonkaTown]

Martin Little took the WiFi train and reviewed the journey for Mobitopia back in December 2003.

Not altogether positive, GPRS may well be quicker for many people.

WiFi on trains in North America

[Anonymous Coward]

There are several rail providers in Canada and the US that are trialling WiFi access. VIA Rail is currently offering it for free on the Toronto to Montreal run. There are trials running down in California as well as other places. Check out PointShot Wireless for more. (No, I dont work there.)