UK Trains Take WiFi Route To Connectivity 236
Randy Sparks writes "The BBC is reporting that one of the UK's largest train operators, GNER, is to offer Wi-Fi net access on its trains. What's interesting is how this net connection will be achieved - by a combination of networks provided by multiple mobile phone connections or even digital TV Internet, provided from ground stations the train passes by. It'll cost UKP4.95 per hour for train goers, although First Class Travellers will get it free..."
Oblig Jokes (Score:5, Funny)
Tunnelling
Rail driving?
Say, didn't you just hit a badger? There goes our proxy server!
Re:Oblig Jokes (Score:2, Funny)
Great! (Score:2, Funny)
Noooooo! (Score:2, Funny)
mmorpg addicts dreams are coming true! (Score:2, Funny)
I can see it now "sorry sir you cant take that see i need it for my 3rd laptop which has my cleric on it, plz leave me along the mobs gonna spawn soon"
Cheap WiFi (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cheap WiFi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Cheap WiFi (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing more required than a bit of knowledge and experience.
here's the tools [hackfaq.org]
Re:Cheap WiFi (Score:4, Informative)
Its GBP! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Its GBP! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, bear in mind that the full name of this green and pleasant land is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". Given that the "GBP" is also the currency of Northern Ireland, "UKP" is actually more accurate.
Re:Its GBP! (Score:5, Informative)
People usually talk in terms of countries, so what are the ISO people using Great Britain for, I wonder?
Rik
Re:Its GBP! (Score:2)
Please don't spout forth if not understanding the post. ;)
Re:Its GBP! (Score:2, Informative)
People use UKP because the country is called the UK (at least that's how the name starts... it kind of goes on and on).
'Great Britain' is a geographical area including some (but not others) of the islands that are near the main island on which England sits.
Why everyone (who doesn't like there) has started referring to the country as 'Great Britain' I have no idea... watching too many Mel Gibson movies, maybe...
Re:Its GBP! (Score:3, Interesting)
My Passport is for
"The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland"
Code of Issuing State : GBR
Nationality : British Citizen
Please note, fingerprinting yankees, that it also says
Her Britanic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.
You'd better watch out, we'll be sending some Royal Guards to
Re:GREAT Britain (Score:2)
I'm not sure what an "Imperial" passport would be anyway. If there is an empire in this day and age I think you'll find it on the other side of the Atlantic.
Re:Its GBP! (Score:5, Informative)
Not quite.
Great Britain is, as you say, a geographical term, but it refers to the largest island of the British Isles - the one comprising the majority of the landmass of England, Wales and Scotland. The British Isles also include Ireland, containing Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as all the smaller places like the Isle of Man, the Shetlands, and so forth . The name of the country (i.e. the political entity, or state) often referred to as Great Britain is actually called the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Personally, I usually refer to my homeland as Britain, as even though it's the greatest country in the world, that isn't saying very much when you consider the competition in this hellhole of a human-vermin-infested planet. Damned by faint praise about sums it up.
Re:Its GBP! (Score:2)
I think it's because most /. readers seems to have at least a passing understanding of the language of the UK ;)
I'd certainly be interested in geek news from France and Germany. These days I seem scarily familiar with the USA and Australia (I'm UK resident, so UK too) but hardly know anything about the rest of the geek world. For all I know, France has been using 802.11z for 19 years, and broadband in Germany means legally downloading DivX's in minutes. On second thoughts...maybe that's why we hear so li
Re:Euros (Score:2)
Re:Euros (Score:2)
Oh yeah, you might find interesting to read http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/html/constitution/c
articles 7, 8 and especially 9 (the "english" button on the top of the page doesn't seem to work; the Fish makes a terrible mess of this text, while Google's seems decent enough).
Re:Its GBP! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Its GBP! (Score:2)
Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that there would be altogether too much interference.
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2)
All this and they didn't remove any of the hundred or so bikes for hire on platform 1..... oh well I suppose that was the paranoia of the days of the Iraq conflict (happened four days before Iraq invasion) - and
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2)
On numerous occasions, the only way I've been able to get anything approximating a seat on our wonderful trains is to lean on somebody's bike saddle in the luggage area. Maybe they were just trying to meet their government targets for available seating?
(If you're wondering how I got into the bike storage area, a tip: be nice to the staff, and they'll be nice to you. This is particularly the case with local services, where the same few crews usually work the same services in rotation. I even used to get
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2, Funny)
You obviously don't live in England. The rail infrastructure is so bad they have enough problems getting the trains to run on the rails let alone network traffic.
Re:Through the rails or over the power lines? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:not possible (Score:2)
Dupe (Score:4, Interesting)
I call dupe.
November 30th, 2003.
First UK On-Train WiFi Service Launches Monday [slashdot.org]
Re:Dupe (Score:5, Informative)
GNER is the only decent train company in the UK, it's the only one that still offers a smoking carriage, it gives regular travellers a loyalty card like many airlines do, in has a proper restaurant service and I've not had too many problems with their timekeeping.
The only thing I can say bad about them is that they used to sell bottled real ales in the buffet car, but they stopped doing those October last year, now you've got only canned mainstream beers which ain't the same. GNER are usually good at listening to feedback so if you're a regular traveller and miss the guest ales then email them and let them know. Vist www.gner.co.uk [gner.co.uk] and click on the 'contact us' link, then select customer relations.
Re:Dupe (Score:2)
Not true. Anglia Railways (now rebranded as "One") have smoking carriages on their mainline services between Norwich and London.
Bob
Re:Dupe (Score:2)
Virgin scrapped it a long time ago, GNER can easily offer smoking because all their trains are at least 9 carriages long (they increased the length of their 8 carriage 125's last year), whereas Virgin indruced new trains that were actually shorter than their old ones on the cross country route (5 carriages max)
Re:Dupe (Score:2)
Re:Dupe (Score:2)
Not accurate. SWT also has stinking carriages. (Score:2)
So SWT has stinkers, gives several free weekend travel vouchers anywhere in their network, have not tried restaurant, but since services are all short ( 2hours) I don't see the need for a proper one.
The last thing I want on trains is drunken smokers, it is bad enough as things stand (have you ever taken a train after 22:00, specially on Fridays?) so I will not click that link you Mr Chimney
Re:Dupe (Score:2)
This is the anouncement that it is live across the whole GNER route.
(For anyone interested, GNER operate mainly on the East Coast Main Line from Aberdeen down to London)
This seems better than GPRS (Score:3, Informative)
Re:This seems better than GPRS (Score:2, Funny)
Expensive (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
(you don't recall correctly)
No, it's because the airlines are more efficient.. (Score:2)
Rail travel is often more expensive... (Score:4, Interesting)
Fast rail travel (like they have on the European continent) is far more comfortable than flying. When you factor in airport distance, check-in times, etc, it's also quicker than flying on most domestic-length routes. Look at Eurostar's dominance on the London-Paris route at the expense of the airlines. It's also far more environmentally friendly than short-haul flights - in Spain you can get a discount on an AVE/Talgo ticket within 48 hours of flying into/out of the country, to persuade you to use the train rather than a connecting flight to your ultimate destination.
Offering WiFi is definately another value-add that will increase train use - you can actually spend that 4-5 hour journey *working* (or whatever) rather than spending approx the same amount of time getting a train to the airport, check-in, hanging around, short flight, another train. Now if they can only get those leaves off the track and introduce high speed services...
Excellent (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Excellent (Score:2)
Also trains run more frequently than planes, so by the time you add the getting from the town centre to the airport, having to che
Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :) (Score:5, Funny)
Of course that bring up the obvious joke:
In Soviet Russia, the office commutes to YOU!
I think the view from a moving train would be much nicer then a static office window anyday!
Re:Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :) (Score:2)
GNER operate the East coast mainline (Aberdeen, Edinburough, Newcastle, Durham, York, Leeds, Doncaster, Peterborough, Stevenage, London Kings Cross) - I've probably missed a couple but thats the main stopping places.
Re:Cool, Spammers now have rolling hide outs :) (Score:4, Informative)
Ya, I know, I live in London.
But the BBC commented on the fact that other Operators were going to interduce the same survice soon. If Branson fails to get the same thing added to Virgin's trains with-in six months of GNER doing it, I'll send my e-mail address to the top five spammers :)
I was not intending for my comment to be Moded funny anyway, I was hoping that the idea of moblie offices would actualy spark some interest, but it looks like most people took it as mobile SPAM offices, and i only ment that to be a humerious title.
A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:5, Funny)
(For the benefit of those who don't have the pleasure of living in the wettest place on earth British Railways used 'Wrong leaves on the track' as an excuse for late/cancelled trains for years...)
Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:2, Informative)
"Leaves on the line"
and"The wrong kind of snow".
Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:2)
Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:3, Funny)
"We apologies for the late running of the 07:25 service to London Bridge. This is due to thieves on the line."
Laugh! I nearly got to work on time.
Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:2, Informative)
The problem came about when they switched the brakes to using disk brakes rather than clamping the outer edge of the wheel. The clamping action would help scrape the leaf mulch off the wheels so the wheels were clean to grip the track. The leaf mulch couldn't be cleaned off when the disk brakes were used.
As for the wrong kind of snow, it's more that the de-icer was sprayed on the tracks
Fave Excuse (Score:2, Funny)
Apparently London Kingscross Thameslink stations overhead lines are very close to the roof and a pigeon flying between the roof and the lines can shorten the gap just enough for the electricity to arc across the gap.
Re:Fave Excuse (Score:2)
Re:A whole new spectrum of excuses (Score:4, Funny)
Some years ago, I was on a train whose conductor explained in great detail why we were going to sit at Nuneaton for an hour, finishing with:
"Once again, we apologise for this delay, which is due solely to the incompetence of the driver."
Thames Trains Reading to Paddington has this (Score:4, Funny)
Cheers,
Ian
Re:Thames Trains Reading to Paddington has this (Score:2)
Expensive. VERY. (Score:5, Interesting)
Rapidly increasing network access on-the-go is a really cool thing. I was excited and waiting for it when it was first announced.
Now I've already got over my disappointment - f.ex. GPRS service is charged based on traffic here, and it's damn expensive. 100 megabytes and if you exceed that, it's 2 euros/megabyte. So, what's 100 mb/month good for? Definitely not for using graphical WWW on Opera's mobile version. Well, I then check my emails with GPRS. Same thing I could do with GSM data previously, phh.. Dunno, people all around seems to be generally richer than me because they are eagerly waiting for this new EDGE thing to come and increase transfer speeds to 200k or so.
I'm not waiting for it eagerly - correct me if I'm wrong - at least in Europe, it's most likely going to feature similar stupid pricing which renders it useless to most non-corporate users. I'll join the hype about wireless access on-the-go at the very day when I can afford to use it effectively.
Re:Expensive. VERY. (Score:2, Interesting)
Here in Paris, about three months ago I noticed that lots of cafes were offering WiFi at a similar rate to this. A couple of months later, and the same places have given up and offer it for free. It started out as a premium service, then became a nice perk to have, and soon it will be an expectat
Wardriiving, the cheaper way to go (Score:3, Funny)
"Ladies and Gentlemen using our wire internet service: this is your conductor speaking, and I would like to inform you than in approximately five seconds, you will need to change your wireless settings - essid is 'linksys', channel 7, IP range is-... Oh, bugger! It appears we are entering the range of another access point, so let me consult our wardriving records... Here we are: essid is 'elizabeth', channel 11, and-... oh dear, we've just left t
Re:Wardriiving, the cheaper way to go (Score:2)
Re:Expensive. VERY. (Score:2)
Re:Expensive. VERY. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you need a lecture on economics 101.
It's not that expensive: you've obviously never left home and backpacked: I've been to cybercafe's all around Europe, and although the prices are better now, about 4-5 years ago, 5GBP per hour would have at the upper limit, but not considered expensive.
You should also read up on economics while you're at it: of course GPRS and related services are expensive: have you seen how much it costs to develop, rollout and manage the technology? It's a lot more than simpl
Re:Expensive. VERY. (Score:3, Informative)
You think that's bad?
I pay GBP25/mo on O2's online offpeak 500 [o2.co.uk] tariff.
I get
How do they expect such technologies to seriously take off at such extortionate prices? I could probably download my email once with that amount of inclusive transfer..
nice idea but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:nice idea but... (Score:2)
Already have this for free in Scandinavia (Score:4, Interesting)
Priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere? (Score:3, Insightful)
-Colin [colingregorypalmer.net]
Re:Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is WiFi so expensive everywhere? (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it will be long before we end up with a model where enterprising pub and cafe owners figure that at about 25/month (dollars, pounds whatever) for an ADSL link they can give their customers semi-free wifi access and compete for the road warrior trade.
They won't be able to make it unmetered, but the likely scenario is where you buy a coffee and get given a voucher for 1MB/15 minutes access
Used it last november (Score:3, Interesting)
I got i little box with an antenna and connected my ethernet port to the box. I got an IP-address via DHCP, but I'm sorry, I didn't check if it was a public or a NAT-address.
Anyway, I got full Internet access as far as I could tell. I could create a SSH-tunnel to my work and use it to read my email (and to do anything I usually do through SSH. It was a little bit slow, thou. I had urgent things to do for my employer, so I didn't have the time to really explore it's limits.
It didn't have any stupid requirements for operating system and was usable with my GNU/Linux laptop.
You can find some (commercial) information about it here: http://www.linx.se/templates/Page.aspx?id=3108
Great for British Trains (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Great for British Trains (Score:2)
Went on SWT last weekend though, its was ridiculous. My reserved seat's coach was missing, the train was overcrowded, but I managed to get a seat. 10 minutes into the journey (settled down watching a DS9 episode) the guy next to me lights a fag. Just about to complain and then I notice theres no non-smoking signs. South West Trains are so barbaric they actually have smoking carriages!
V
Re:Great for British Trains (Score:2)
Apart from that I think South West Trains were appalling, only slighly better than the now defunct Connex and I've personally never been in a smoking carriage of a South West Train so it must only be certain services not all of them.
BTW I'm not a smoker, but I see nothing wro
Re:Great for British Trains (Score:2)
Still, in future I wont bother with SWT unless theres no choice, thank god for competition!
Bollocks mate. (Score:2)
They're not the first. (Score:4, Interesting)
The cost (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that your battery will go flat after no more than two hours, it's only going to cost you about a tenner anyway :o)
Of course i'm ignoring the fact you might have a spare battery - but also I think that Virgin Trains are the only ones at the moment to offer power points in their trains. First class only.
Re:The cost (Score:2)
Nope, with the introdcution of their new trains Virgin now have power points in cattle class as well.
Al.Re:The cost (Score:2)
Re:The cost (Score:2)
My 2.5-year-old PowerBook still runs for three hours or more on a single charge of the original battery during light use (browsing the web on WiFi qualifies; building XFree86 while playing Civ3 doesn't).
Re:The cost (Score:2)
Of course if you're frequently on a long train journey, get a 2.5kg (5lb) 20Ah motorbike battery and charger and a 12V-16V DCDC converter.
Pah! IP over trains protocol is the way to go (Score:3, Funny)
Upgrades... (Score:2)
London-Ipswich is only a couple of hours journey, but it would really be worth it to upgrade on the 5-7 hour PITA that is Plymouth-London-Plymouth...
I imagine the same would apply to London-Newcastle, London-Scotland...
All very good, however (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the one area where this always falls over is with power. Our batteries are just don't last long enough. I have a brand new Dell D600 (finally gave up on my Thinkpad T21) and the battery will give me 1 - 1.5 hours max.
As long as the trains also offer power outlets so I can keep the charge going I'd happily pay for the connectivity
Re:All very good, however (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and the trains do have power outlets anyway. :p
Brand Communications (Score:4, Informative)
The press release states "The latest trials were held on route between Edinburgh and London Kings Cross and achieved realistic data rates and speeds, with over 18 GigaBytes of data being sent to and from the train."
I got the impression from the people on the stand that they will be using WiMax to get the signal to the train passengers, and then standard 802.11b inside the carriages.
If it all works out it should make train journeys a bit more interesting, but there goes my excuse to get out of doing any work.
hehe (Score:2, Interesting)
and
" A radio system for train drivers recommended after the Paddington rail crash has been delayed by five years. The digital radio network was to be introduced on the rail network in 2008. [bbc.co.uk]
But the system, allowing signallers to speak to a number of drivers at the same time, will not be ready until 2013 - 14 years after the crash."
so 5 years for wi-fi, 9 years for ad
Links (Score:3, Informative)
GNER press release [gner.co.uk]
GNER WiFi site [gnermobileoffice.co.uk]
The full rollout hasn't commenced yet but you can find out which trains are already running with WiFi [gner.co.uk]
The on board menu [goeat.com]
Review of the experience (Score:3, Informative)
Not altogether positive, GPRS may well be quicker for many people.
WiFi on trains in North America (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Twats (Score:2)
Most of the safety issues are with Network Rail rather than the train companies themselves.