Wireless Internet Provides Competitive Edge to Rail Operators

Every time Rupert Clark, a busy executive, takes the train from Berwick-upon-Tweed -- the most northern town in England -- to the King's Cross Station in London, he no longer becomes bored and impatient on the four-hour journey. Instead, he spends the time working online. "GNER's Mobile Office keeps me connected on the move and is fantastic," he says. "Now I manage to get a full afternoon's work done whilst traveling."

Clark is one of scores of commuter and inter-city rail passengers who are now on board and online. According to the industry, over the past year rail operators across North America and Europe have deployed onboard Internet in at least a dozen rail routes that ply as many as 100 trains. By this year, several hundred more trains are slated to join the league.

It is no surprise that wireless Internet deployment on trains is the flavor of the season in the Wi-Fi world today. "Rail is the next frontier in Wi-Fi because there are more than 3 billion trips taken on public transportation every year," says Chris Cavallo, president, ATCI, a U.S.-based technology integration company that helps rail operators deploy onboard Internet services. "Nearly every major city has a commuter rail or subway line, and Internet access on these systems is an extension of the workday or school day. It's a natural market."

Right now however, what mainly drives the rail operators is competition. "The railway sector in the United Kingdom is a very competitive market and competition between operators is the key driver driving the rail Internet," says John Gelson, spokesperson GNER, a rail operator in the UK's East Coast line that claims to run the world's biggest fleet of wireless Internet-equipped train carriages, and Britain's first all-Wi-Fi train fleet. "One of the key reasons why we have invested in wireless Internet in our trains is that we have plenty of competition in our routes that include motor car, budget airlines as well as other railways."

The next big driver is passenger demand. Operators say that over 80 percent of their business travelers want Internet service on the move, and since Internet access on airplanes are still rare, providing onboard Internet service helps rail operators to win over passengers from airlines. "In-train wireless Internet helps us to respond positively to that by offering a service that is unique to GNER. Particularly in the market for business travelers whose choices are driving or going by air," says Gelson. "Onboard Internet service not only turns their journey time into productive time, but it also helps us improve our operations through real-time video monitoring of passengers and voice services for staff."

According to Peter Kingsland of SCI Solutions, there is yet another factor driving Internet connectivity. "The development of a combination of technologies, such as satellite to bring data down to the train and 3G and GPRS, to take data away from the train, have helped operators to unwire their trains to facilitate onboard Internet services," he says.

Still, there are technical hurdles to overcome. Trains travel at high speeds through various obstacles like densely populated cities, long deserted stretches, high mountains and through tunnels, which pose the "biggest challenge of getting the actual train cars unwired."

But the "Two main problems to overcome are establishing an onboard local-area network, and establishing a continuous wide-area network (or train to shore communications link), says Magnus McEwen-King , CEO, QinetiQ Rail, a UK-based company that provides technology and services to the European rail industry.

Rail operators say that to a large extent they are tackling the problems by using a combination of fixed wireless (like GPRS/3G/HSDPA, Wi-Fi or WiMAX) technologies and satellites. However, according to Andr