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

Trains

[Anonymous Coward]

High charges? On the British rail network?

NEVER!!!

Re:Trains

[gowen]

There is no British Rail network. It got broken up and sold off 15 years ago.

And, of course, since private enterprise is always much more efficient than public ownership, that's why today the railways are now safe, clean, cheap and reliable.

Re:Trains

[91degrees]

There is no British Rail network, but there is still a British rail network. Check the capitalisation. The first implies a network for "British Rail". The second implies a rail network that is British.

Re:Trains

[l-ascorbic]

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.

Re:Trains

[BenjyD]

My sarcasm detector is off the scale...

The government subsidy to the railways has just about trebled since privatisation, IIRC. Private enterprise efficiency my arse.

If you're ever bored on a British train, find a ticket inspector who looks old enough to have been working since before privatisation and ask them if they prefer working for the privatised company.

Re:Trains

[Shisha]

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.

100 mph?

[The New Andy]

Call me once they get it working on those German trains that Einstein used to ride to work - the ones travelling near the speed of light.

In a battle between WiMax and Doppler shift, I'm putting my money on Doppler.

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.

Re:Great

[linuxpoweredtrekkie]

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.

How queer...

[Sirch]

"The Brighton Express is an apt place for a pioneering Wi-Fi service, given Brighton's role as a high-tech media-savvy remote suburb of London"

Since when has Brighton been a "high-tech media-savvy remote suburb of London"? As far as I'm aware, the only thing Brighton's particularly renowned (infamous) for is its status as the UK's San Francisco...

Re:How queer...

[91degrees]

Since when has Brighton been a "high-tech media-savvy remote suburb of London"?

Since the mid 90's. It has a considerable prescence of internet providers and web based companies, as well as the European HQ of American Express.

As for "a remote suburb of London" - No idea where that came from. Probably ignorant Londoners who are unable to comprehend that something interesting might happen outside of London.

100mph?

[gallondr00nk]

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

Re:100mph?

[TheRaven64]

Intercity trains can go at 125mph. Be aware, however, that this is roughly analogous to the GFLOPS numbers quoted by CPU manufacturers, i.e. down hill, with a training wind and no passengers. The existence of weather (any weather) seems to have a significant adverse affect on their ability to move.

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.

Yet another WiFi story...

[__aailob1448]

Am I the only one getting tired of all these uninteresting stories about WiFi being available here or there?

Yes, you can bridge hundreds of wireless routers and have humongous hot spots, yes you can get WiFi on moving spaces, yes you can go to the desert and have a connection over large distances and maybe beat this week's world record.

We know that.We really do. WiFi is great, it's this awesome magic thing that allows you to download the interweb out of thin air. Now knock it the hell off.

Thanks you.

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:Commercial WiFi Clue-By-Four

[MoralHazard]

For another perspective...

I think T-Mobile's rates are just fine, thank you. And it's probably not just because I have a job.

Seriously, one person (or even many people) with the opinion that the pricing is too high for too little doesn't mean that a business model sucks! Last I heard, T-Mobile's hotspot subscriptions were doing pretty damn well. One of the reasons why the hourly rate is so high is to encourage people who use it more than rarely to subscribe, which helps even out the revenue stream and usage patterns. This is just like cellphone billing--plan minutes are loads cheaper per minute than overtime minutes because they want to impose a cost on you for being unpredictable.

As long as they have enough people who pay the freight, bitching or not, nobody else can say that the price is too high to be a "good business model".

Then again, I come from NYC. When I went to LA for the NBA all-star game last year, I remember driving down Figueroa St., about 1/2 block from the Staples Center, and seeing signs for $20 parking spots 1 hour before gametime. I literally said to myself "$20? What a deal! How can these not be taken this late before the game!" Turns out it was because LA people consider $20 for parking to be a ripoff. In NYC, that's kind of a steal.

High Wi-fi Charges

[shashark]

"and we'll have to pay T-Mobile's high Wi-Fi charges"

There goes another brilliant service down the drain.

High User Access Charges: The reason why services like these remain hugely unpopular.

Irony though is, service providers spend a fraction of what they earn over these services. Yet the "its-a-premium-service-hence-we-milk-you" syndrome keeps them from bringing the charges down. When will the service providers understand that term premium is only notional. Mobile was a luxury only 10 years ago -- now a country like India as 100mn cell users -- why ? because its low-cost.

Price is an entry barrier -- and high prices let less and less people use a service, and recommend it to other users. I just hope T-mobile understands that and keep the charges minimal, so that more users use it. And OEMs can provide more cheap solutions leveraging the service -- like wi-fi for train-staff communication.

Re:Demand should lead supply

[pklong]

Bah ha ha ha. That would involve someone other than Branson buying new trains (not that it's improved service. Bransons 15 minutes off the journey doesn't help you when your journey is an hour late. Like on Saturday, and the seats are uncomfortable as well.).

Besides the rust holes on the roof improve the WiMax signal reception.

I've recently figured out why the South East is sticking to the ancient third rail system in use, despite the low maximum speed possible using it. It's so when we finally become a fully fledged third world country people will be able to ride on the roof of trains, just like you see in travel documentaries.

Three Bridges

[phil-trick]

Great, now I can stand on the platform at Three Bridges and get WiFi access for free for a few seco...

I have a T-mobile Hotspot account...

[An Ominous Cow Erred]

I have it because it's my primary internet connection. I live one block from a hotspot and I get it from my house. $30/month for a T1 (that almost nobody else uses) is not that bad even though it's NAT'd.

The account is good at thousands of hotspots world wide (including, I assume, this train one), so really it's a pretty good deal.

I've been thinking of getting a Sidekick -- then the fee for a TMob Hotspot account would drop to $20. =P

(Just to stress that I'm not astroturfing here -- I don't think I'd pay for this service if it weren't my primary internet connection at home... There's lots of free hotspots available at all sorts of businesses and public places... but if I traveled a lot more and were well-payed, I think I'd do it.)

Re:Demand should lead supply

[pklong]

Yes. They would be very effective at pushing up the revenue per passenger if you put all the second class travellers on the roof.

Re:GNER has been doing this for a year

[rapiddescent]

I've written a quick HOWTO on how the GNER system works with Linux. If you are interested then have a look here

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

It would be ironic...

[DigiShaman]

It would be rather ironic if VOIP sounds better using a WiFi connection then it does using standard cell networks.

Can you hear me? Now....now...how bout now? Wait just a sec, let me fire up Skype mobile. Ahhhh...much better. :)

Because they have no other choice?

[rpjs]

Take commuting into central London. Even with the outrageously high rail fares, it's still cheaper for most people to commute by train than car when you factor in the high-price of parking in central London, and not to mention the Congestion Charge.