Always-on internet access on the move will become a reality this autumn as train travellers between London, Yorkshire and Scotland will be offered a WLAN-based ‘mobile hotspot’ by train operator GNER.
There has been an explosion in the number of fixed wireless hotspots this year as travelling workers demand access to email and internet away from their office.
But this is the first time a hotspot has been able to move. The user experience should be far better than GPRS because there will be less dropout and higher speeds.
GNER has fitted a series of access points and bridges to one of its trains to give passengers a share of the 11Mbps WiFi connection.
The signal will propagate throughout the carriages to give coverage throughout the train.
Backhaul to the internet is handled by a satellite link connected to the main access point. Some use of GSM and other land-based wireless frequencies are required.
“We’ve been testing this with GNER, and I think we will see the session hold up 99.8% of the time,” said Michael Johansson, chief executive of iComera, which has developed the system.
GNER intended to run its first pilot service as Mobile Europe went to press. “We are looking to offer internet access on all trains in the later part of 2004,” GNER’s David Mallender told Mobile Europe. Other train companies are expected to follow suit.
“We have found that train hotspot providers have already marked out high speed and Pendolino (tilting) train services as low hanging fruit and are racing to sign exclusive deals with these operators,” said Peter Kingsland, a wireless analyst with BWCS.
The main operator of Pendolino trains, Virgin, revealed it is in talks with London-based Broadreach, which is developing a pure-satellite backhaul solution for the train operator.
“We have found a technical solution … we are very keen on the idea. Broadreach is our partner going forward,” said Virgin’s Jim Rowe.
Heathrow Express, which runs leaky feeder cables through its tunnels, also said it was looking to identify the right solution, and expected to roll out internet access on its services “in months rather than years”.
A commercial service is now in operation in Scandinavia, where passengers travelling between Gothenburg and Copenhagen can use the iComera-based internet access solution. Passengers on the route pay for an additional ticket, which gives them a password for the service. That ticket costs 80kroner (£6). GNER said it had not decided on a pricing structure yet.
Kingsland warned that, despite the successful rollout in Scandinavia, there were still technical hurdles to overcome for UK-based operators.
“Maintaining connectivity at these [fast] speeds and through tunnels is a huge task,” the analyst said.Amongst the larger concerns are handover between the different backhaul technologies, and how to stop a session dropping in a tunnel.
Despite this, “we would expect the number of announcements to ramp up considerably over the next 6-12 months,” he added.
Johansson said he could see “five companies in the UK which might be interested in this”, all of which ran trains with journeys over one hour.