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German Railways To Get WLAN RailNet

Posted by Zonk on from the wlan-spiderwebs dept.

wertarbyte writes "According to the German IT news site Heise, german Telekom and the german railway corporation Deutsche Bahn have formed an alliance to equip the ICE high speed trains with WLAN access (Babelfish translation), as well as the stations those trains arrive at. This offer is aimed at business travellers, and will first be introduced on routes frequented by those ("travel time is usable time")."

8 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Nice by Klar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If only they had this in Canada. I used to take the train several times a month for 5 hour trips, and interent would have been real nice for working on assignments using my laptop. Instead, I had to work offline, then quickly connect for about 30seconds to update stuff when we would pull into a station. This could be very handy if more places start implementing it.

    --
    Boxing Equipment Reviews
  2. This is good by Husgaard · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I live in Denmark, just north of Germany, and would really like to see this in danish trains.

    From time to time I travel on train for a few hours. On business class I can get an electric outlet for my laptop so it doesn't run out of power while I work. It is nice that I can get some work done in the train.

    But it is really annoying to be disconnected from the net while I travel by train.

    I wouldn't mind paying a bit extra for the ticket if I could have access to the net. (Well, I don't pay the ticket myself. But my company wouldn't mind paying either.)

  3. Lucky by ananegg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Those Europeans get all the cool Train stuff........

    --
    Insert Pithy Quote here.
  4. Contractors... by scaltagi_the_pirate · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And if you work as a contractor..."travel time is billable time!"

  5. Thanks for the original by Husgaard · · Score: 3, Insightful
    The original translation was so horrible that I could almost not understand it although I fluently read both english and german. The translation you provided was readable, and the original german article was even better.

    If /. is going to link to auto-translated articles, I would prefer that the Google translator is used. Both because it translates fine and because it contains a link to the original text for those who understand the original language.

  6. The Germans get WiFi on their trains... by gwydion04 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... wherease we get no trains. Bush is planning to cut all federal funds for Amtrak, which will pretty much kill it.

    I want my uber-trains with wifi, darnit!

  7. Train stations as well by Eternally+optimistic · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Accoding to the german version, a speaker (a guy talking, not an audio device) says that "in the future" train stations will be covered, at least those where the ICE trains stop (as opposed to just drive through). Currently only their "DB Lounges" are served by WLAN.

    --
    What keeps me going is my inertia.
  8. Link to original article, not translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Some of us are not constrained to speaking only English. Please link to the original language of an article and if someone wants to translate it, they can post a babelfish or other link in the comments.