Internet in trains
If someone would have asked me 10 years ago i would have bet all my Macs that in 2008 there is Internet in trains, restaurants,.. everywhere. Now I’m older and wiser and have worked for a telecommunication company and thus I think: having Internet everywhere in acceptable speed with no interruptions is pure fiction.
For commuters in trains, at least having mostly-seamless mid-speed connectivity would enhance the working experience a lot.
Of course I can see the technical challenges: WLAN in the coaches with an uplink to ordinary 3G (HSPA) is maybe not the future proof solution. Cell capacity is too limited for the about 150 laptops and 500 cell phones in a rush hour train. Additionally, the train moves with high speed - resulting in short handover slots - so that you’re already lucky if your phone calls do not get dropped all the time. Hence, the problem is in the nature of 3G technology and I’m sure that others (much smarter guys) have already thought of good solutions.
Even though I’m not working for a telco company any more I still try to find better product ideas when I’m sitting in the train with a broken connection. Here comes my favorite thought of this week: You can choose in a web interface of the train company which websites you will need during the journey. The sites are cached in huge repository which resides within the train and can be synced in all big stations. “Snapshot Internet in the train”, I would call it.
December 9th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Some people recently asked, if I was serious about this idea.. Of course not