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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?
Where is this "free beer" everyone is always talking about? I must be getting screwed...even Keystone Light is costing me 15+...
War-railing?
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.
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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.)
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.
Those Europeans get all the cool Train stuff........
Insert Pithy Quote here.
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.
The same kind of thing was recently put into place on certain routes of the Washington State Ferries, one of which I use daily.
It's a really good idea, but I wonder if rail will have the same limitations I experience with our own system (boats).
Mobilisa's "Wireless Over Water" is cool- when we're in the slip or not too far from it. The trip I take is 35 minutes each way, the first 5-7 minutes and the last 5-7 minutes are awesome, but the whole time in between (from either Seattle or Bainbridge Island) is riddled with drop outs and disconnects.
Well, it's a boat in the middle of the water, you might say. Yes, but not really any different from a train that has to move between access points along its own route. If they put enough of them in, great, but on a bullet train how bad would it suck to have a drop out every few minutes while it moves from one hotspot to the next?
Yes of course the contractor implementing it will say that won't happen, but they said that about our in-commute Wi-Fi, too.
R(k)
And if you work as a contractor..."travel time is billable time!"
I believe the ICE already offered this service in first class. At least there were some advertising brochures laying around that mentioned somthing about this. Tip: If you reserve a seat with a table there is a standard wall outlet under it that delivers 220v so you can be gaming or watching movies on your laptop the whole trip without worrying about batteries. This has become my preferred way of traveling inside Europe. The addition of wifi makes the the PERFECT form of travel!
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
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.
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
VIA Rail already offers this serveice in Canada:e n_index.h tml
http://www.viarail.com/wirelessinternet/
Wi-Fi on the train, Internet heandled by 2 way to a Bell satellite
Will consumer-grade WLAN equipment be able to deal with issues such as Doppler shifted frequencies and dilated packet times?
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?
It is great. Access is free in the 1st class seats and the speed is good. I was travelling at 100mph on my way to London while IM chatting with friends in Canada.
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.
so - can you wardial for 15 seconds at a time if you live near the tracks?
... 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!
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.
If only they were able to twist the rails around each other, they'd be able to get even better throughput.
IANAGerman but I can beat google on this one. Doing this quickly but I'm happy the content is right:
"accordinng to british media sources the british firm 't-mobile uk' plans to test this between london and brighton on the Southern Express in march and april.
To allow data in and out of the trains they're setting up a wimax network along that stretch of track that should provide up to 32mbps."
This has existed on the Linx train between Copenhagen and Gothenburg since July 2003. On that train, a rotating sattelite reciever/transmitter was placed on top of one of the cars of the train.
Linx has recently gone out of business and has been bought out by SJ (Swedish railways). SJ has also announced (Swedish article) that 85 of its trains will also be equipped with WLAN.
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.
Do you think they may expect more of you?
The solution to this is remarkably simple -- people need to stop being such damned pushovers. I don't understand why more people feel the need to complain about how management expects more out of them now that they're more easily reachable; all they have to do is show a little backbone and stand up for their free time once in a while.
When people negotiate pay, they need to take availability into account. Want to be able to call me on Saturdays? That'll cost you a few thousand more a year, because I value my free time. Want to send me on business trips? Here's the minimum per diem I expect. A retired gentleman I worked for a few months ago gave quite a lot of testimony as an expert witness for product liability lawsuits, and his view on it was simple: he starts getting paid the moment he walks out his door. If they want him bad enough, they'll pay it, and he makes a bundle; otherwise, he can stay at home and enjoy his retirement.
WiMAX has a theoretical bandwidth (warning: pdf, see pg 5) of about 4.5Mbps per 3.5Mhz channel (outdoors, range 15km)... so it will probably mean they utilize approximately 7 channels (= 31.5Mbps). Having 32Mbps per user would be an insane amount of bandwidth and channel usage. Of course it all depends on the details which are not provided...
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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!
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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.
As of the fall, Mobility was still being worked on. Certainly no hardware available. So I still wonder how they are going to do this. Maybe just don't intend to deploy all that soon.
Built in mobility support would only be needed if peoples laptops were connecting directly to the fixed routers. I imagine what they will do is have 802.11G to WiMax routers on the train and use MobileIP or NEMO or custom software to allow those routers to switch between fixed routers. The fixed routers and the train itself will probably have directional antennas to maximize the distance between fixed routers although they will need less directional antennas and routers spaced closer together on curved sections of track. The train may have more than one antenna (with its own transciever) with varying directionality so it can acheive maximum distance on straight sections of track and still see the fixed router on curved sections. They probably have fiber running the length of the track (many railroads already have this for signaling and other purposes) which they can use to connect the fixed routers to the internet. It might also be possible to use a continous dipole along the track with a diapole on top of the train transmitting a very week signal over a long distance (though signal strength may not be anywhere close to uniform along the length of the dipole). The router could also have a squid proxy to conserve upstream bandwidth though they may not have enough users on the train for this to be benificial
As an added benifit to the railroad, they could transmit GPS data and telemetry over the connection as well as send signals from dispatch telling the train to modify its speed so it doesn't have to stop at signals.
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.
...is WLAN-enabled and it has been for quite some time I think. The link to the outside world seems to be managed with the help of 3G and satellites. More info here
If they can only survive through government funding, Amtrak obviously isn't being used enough to merit its existence.
Great! Let's apply that logic to planes and cars.
Why shouldn't their funds be cut. Right now, a train ticket does not cost significantly less than a plane ticket.
That's because the infrastructure and operating expenses necessary for flying are heavily subsidized by the government (i.e., your and my tax dollars)
Traveling from one side of the US to the other takes a matter of hours by plane, but days by train (I've done it both ways).
That's because the US railroad infrastructure is thoroughly obsolete--it doesn't haev to be that slow.
Of course, for coast-to-coast trips, planes will remain significantly faster for some time to come, but planes could be competitive for the most heavily traveled routes, up and down along the coast, within the mid-west, and other regional trips.
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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See also http://cms.lufthansa.com/fly/de/en/inf/0,4976,0-0- 1144177,00.html