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WiMax Hits 100 mph on Rails to Brighton
judgecorp writes "T-Mobile has put a Wi-Fi service on the London to Brighton Express commuter service. It uses WiMax (ok, pre-WiMax) for the uplink, and is cheap enough to put on any other long-distance rail service. One interesting thing is that they didn't need to wait for next year's "mobile" WiMax version: the system can handover between base stations at 100mph, using today's pre-WiMax (802.16d) products. The only drawback - in June the free trial ends, and we'll have to pay T-Mobile's high Wi-Fi charges."
They are currently in the process of replacing all the trains on the london to brighton line with nice new ones, which are a lot better.
It is a very busy line however, at peak times people are bound to have to stand no matter how many seats there are.
You'll notice the gp wrote "British rail network" not "British Rail network". Of course there's a British rail network. It runs on track owned by Network Rail, with services operated by the TOCs. It may have many owners, but there's still a network. You can still use one ticket to travel between any two stations in the country.
What makes the GNER system so fun is that you don't need to pay to get onto the train network - so you could have a great big LAN party going at 125mph between London and Edinburgh!
rd
No you can't. Take London -> Birmingham as an example. You can buy cheap Chiltern tickets for trains that take ages and go via Oxford and Leam. Or you can buy more expensice Virgin tickets for trains that go via Coventry.