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German Railways To Get WLAN RailNet
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")."
...how much will it cost?
This is interesting. Putting a bunch of wireless routers on a train is simple enough, but this will only get you a closed, local area network. I wonder how Deutsche Bahn plans to get packets to and from trains moving at high speed, especially considering the promised bandwidth. I can imagine several ways, but none seem cost effective.
After all, I am strangely colored.
...Google does a better translation; at least it has no odd question marks.
Most interesting: "In order to lead the data from and to the driving course to, the British set on a Wimax net along the distance, which is to transfer up to 32 MBit/s" If that means download rates will be up to that much, I wouldn't mind something that fast on my DSL (mine barely reaches 3MBit/s). Especially in the middle of a railroad (unless that 32 MBit/s is shared by every commuter on the train).
FWIW, here's the original I believe, for those that understand such a language.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
This indeed was far more civilized than any train I had been in the U.S., and also was much nicer than the horror of ever more cramped planes. All it was missing was wifi. If they change that, it will indeed be very cool.
I sent this to slashdot like a week ago but I guess they didn't find it appropriate.
p /
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TRAVEL/03/03/subway.tvs.a
This might possibly play out the same way the widespread use of cell phones did. If you have a cell phone you are expected to be reachable and therefore maybe called upon more often "just incase". Once everyone gets a cell phone everyone is called upon more often. Now if the company knows you have Internet access on the train and notice an increase in your productivity. Do you think they may expect more of you?
transmit the WAN signal the same way they do the power. Either thought the rails or a over head wire. Then connect the wire to WiFi routers within the train.
I take the train at my own expense on some business trips so I can relax and get away. Pagers, cell phones, and other devices do not work along railways in the South in most cases, so you have some "relax" time until the phone starts ringing in a major city. This may actually cut their business because some of their customers will just take the plane if they are going to have to communicate with people again!
http://dont.spam.me.anymore.com
I was at home in India during Nov-Dec and was surprised to see the spread of broadband there. RailTel (http://www.railtelindia.com/) has already laid an extensive optic-fiber network to connect the railway stations in India - keep in mind India has the biggest rail network in the world, albeit not the widest in territorial span.
RailTel has a pilot experiment running on a high-speed train in western India where they are providing wireless access on the train. There are plans to extend that to the rest of the network. Of course, only some chosen, elite trains will get it, but they will get it nonetheless.
For the price-conscious, I should let you know that the internet cafes at some railway stations in India provide internet access at less than $0.50 per hr and international calling for $0.10 per min through VOIP.
well if you're actually working on the train then you should be able to book those hours towards your working time... this then leads to the next step of getting them to recognise that you can work from home just as well...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
One way would be to use a satellite telephone circuit and get a dialup internet connection through it
A better way would be to get a dedicated tcp/ip connection through a satellite. You get more bandwidth that way as well
For operational reasons it would be a good idea to have tcp/ip out to the train anyway. Makes it easier to integrate your ground based systems with those on the vehicle.
Such a system could simplify everything from monitoring vehicle engineering data to ordering more food for the vending machines, if any. The internet link would just share the same channel
A series of ground based microwave links could also provide the required connectivity. I don't think it would work in tunnels without special hardware on the inside
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