Train Communications Systems 2010 in London this week, brought train companies and broadband providers together. A host of train companies from all over the world will be sharing their experiences of putting WiFi onto trains.
Nomad Digital, Icomera and 21Net are often hired to provide the technology which often combines cellular, WiMAX and satellite communications. WAAV combines different cellular carriers on its WiFi router.
On-board WiFi has been a popular feature, and is expanding fast:
- Amtrak announced this month that free wireless will become a standard service for passengers on Amtrak’s Acela Express trains. It follows a three-month trial run in which all 20 of Amtrak’s Acela Express cars provided free service. Amtrak says about 115,000 passengers per month have used the service, or about 39% of ridership. It plans to expand the wireless service to other routes starting in the late fall of 2010.
- NOMAD was awarded a contract with train builder Talgo to deliver and operate a wireless broadband and passenger WiFi on all Talgo’s trains servicing their route from Vancouver, Canada through Seattle, Portland and Eugene, Oregon.
- UTA Frontrunner trains in Salt Lake City, and the Amtrak Cascades service out of Seattle use Nomad Digital to provide the service. The UK company has seen an increase in orders from emerging economies such as China and Dubai, but said its biggest customers remained Norway and Holland.
- Virgin’s WiFi trains have logged over 500,000 travellers using their WiFi service, with the number of monthly users increasing, to over 90,000. Virgin’s WiFi service uses Nomad gear.
- Kris Erickson helped manage the deployment of Wi-Fi on 13 commuter rail lines operated by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, which serves Boston and its suburbs, with one line extending to Providence, R.I. MBTA spent $1.9 million to equip the first 258 cars. Amtrak has allocated $300,000 in its 2010 budget to outfit the Acela Express with wireless access. Amtrak operates 20 high-speed trains, each of which includes six cars. WAAV supplied wireless routers to MBTA.
- Cablevision has filed a proposal to extend their Optimum WiFi network onto the Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter rail trains. The service would be free to existing Cablevision customers — with a “reasonable access option” for non-Cablevision customers. Cablevision would assume all costs associated with extending its Optimum WiFi network onto the trains and would also create a separate, private and secure, WiFi network exclusively for MTA use.
- Europe’s first privately owned high-speed train operator will launch services in September next year. NTV will began services between Rome and Milan before gradually introducing services on all its routes, which stretch from Salerno in southern Italy to Venice and Turin in the north, by the summer of 2012. The trains will offer continuous WiFi internet connection, television and, in one coach, cinema-standard film viewing.
- Taiwan’s bullet train is testing WiMAX. Taiwan government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has used WiMAX on high-speed trains at a speed of 300km/hour. US-based Corning and Japan-based NTT participated in the pilot project, with Corning providing the radio over fiber distributed antenna system for transmission of signals at high moving speeds
- Huawei has deployed an LTE network to support wireless connectivity on a MagLev train in China. It runs on 19 miles of magnetic track between the center of the Shanghai district to Pudong International Airport at 250 miles per hour. The company is claiming that its test can give passengers maximum uplink speeds of 50 Mbit/s with a 99.5 percent successful handover rate as the train speeds between cells.
Competitors like BoltBus and Megabus now provide free WiFi in the high traffic areas such as the NE corridor of the United States.
Car manufacturers are including WiFi connectivity, too.
Ford’s Sync will offer Google Maps at no extra charge allowing drivers to send destinations from Google Maps to their Ford vehicle through the cloud-based SYNC Traffic, Directions & Information (TDI) app. It’ll become available late June, for all 2010 – 2011 car models. But you’ll need to have the Ford Traffic, Directions and Information app installed in your phone and a Bluetooth-enabled phone to stream the information into the system. Ford’s Sync uses a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) approach.
OnStar has struck a deal with Google to integrate Google Maps into all of its navigation systems. OnStar users can now use Google Maps to get directions to a destination and then send those destinations to OnStar’s Turn-by-Turn Navigation Service in their vehicles.
