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