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."

Comments

Great

[gowen]

If my experience of the London-Brighton line is anything to go by, the money would be much better spent :
i) installing more seats or adding extra carriages
ii) actually cleaning the inside of the trains from time to time.

It's no use getting a WiFi connection if you have to stand up the whole bloody way.

Commercial WiFi Clue-By-Four

[MrNonchalant]

When will T-Mobile, SBC, Telarama, et al all realize their wifi business model sucks? I mean seriously, 5 bucks an hour, 20 bucks a month? For scattered coffee shops and book stores that I maybe frequent once a week? None of them has anything near enough coverage to make a subscription worth my while and their hourly rates are way too high. Maybe for a certain sector of the populace, those earning six figures and those who spend a lot of time in coffee shops, this is acceptable, but to middle america (where the real money is) it stinks. Maybe if they all pulled their resources and allowed me to log into any of their collective hot spots for a reasonable (~$15) monthly fee I'd consider it.

Re:100mph?

[gowen]

Never mind the wi-fi, I'm impressed by the fact that a UK train reached 100mph in the first place.

We had 100MPH trains back when American Railroads major passengers were migrant workers fleeing the Great Depression.