Replying to WiFi and Amtrak: Missed Connections

The test failed and Amtrak went back to he drawing board to try and figure out what to do.

My guess, it will be at least two years if not more before one sees any WiFi on the Auto Train or any other long distance train.

Any new info about Wifi availability on the Auto Train?

The college here has 80Mbps with 1100ish students, and there's still bandwidth issues and demand for more bandwidth.

80 megs ! that is it ......... DAYM darn kids and Xbox ...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's being said, but an 80 Mbps pipe isn't anything special for 1,000+ users. If even only a quarter of them are online at any one time that's only 320Kbps worth of bandwidth each. That's enough for basic tasks, but not the sort of things that college students are likely to be using their internet for. In many industrialized countries 40Mbps to the home is nothing special and 100Mbps is becoming common. There are a few areas you can get up to 300Mbps to the home in the US, but that initiative appears to have stalled as the market decided that unlimited data over fiber pipes wasn't going to be nearly as profitable as limited data caps over LTE.

Texas Sunset, you're absolutely correct. I realize that it's nothing special, but it's a frame of reference for what may be wanted on a train to actually get decent internet, and why there are difficulties.

The college here has 80Mbps with 1100ish students, and there's still bandwidth issues and demand for more bandwidth.

80 megs ! that is it ......... DAYM darn kids and Xbox ...

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what's being said, but an 80 Mbps pipe isn't anything special for 1,000+ users. If even only a quarter of them are online at any one time that's only 320Kbps worth of bandwidth each. That's enough for basic tasks, but not the sort of things that college students are likely to be using their internet for. In many industrialized countries 40Mbps to the home is nothing special and 100Mbps is becoming common. There are a few areas you can get up to 300Mbps to the home in the US, but that initiative appears to have stalled as the market decided that unlimited data over fiber pipes wasn't going to be nearly as profitable as limited data caps over LTE.

WiFi works just fine on moving trains and buses in many other places in the world, and for cryin' out loud it even works on planes with 500 passengers in it. So what is so special about our trains that makes it an unworkable idea? Heck even my 3G/4G MiFi service works just fine when there is signal. The issue is of making signals more available along the RoW.

Your question is answered in the article itself: airlines force you to pay for wi-fi service. That weeds out people who may use wi-fi if it's free to casually browse the Web, but wouldn't see it worth paying for. Amtrak doesn't have that filter, so everyone that wants to use it has access to it. You would probably need close to a 40Mbps connection consistently to provide for the wants of 500 rail passengers, and even then people will be frustrated. (The college here has 80Mbps with 1100ish students, and there's still bandwidth issues and demand for more bandwidth.)

80 megs ! that is it ......... DAYM

darn kids and Xbox ...

I ride the San Joaquins a lot and the wireless works well. Maybe that's because a lot of the riders, especially south of Fresno, aren't using smartphones or ipads. The parolees who get on at Corcoran (near the big state prison)barely have a suitcase with them. So there's not a lot of competition for the bandwidth.

The times I've been on the Pac Surfliners, the wireless has been good too, and not just in the cafe car. Maybe California is peppered with more towers up and down the state?

WiFi works just fine on moving trains and buses in many other places in the world, and for cryin' out loud it even works on planes with 500 passengers in it. So what is so special about our trains that makes it an unworkable idea? Heck even my 3G/4G MiFi service works just fine when there is signal. The issue is of making signals more available along the RoW.

Your question is answered in the article itself: airlines force you to pay for wi-fi service. That weeds out people who may use wi-fi if it's free to casually browse the Web, but wouldn't see it worth paying for. Amtrak doesn't have that filter, so everyone that wants to use it has access to it. You would probably need close to a 40Mbps connection consistently to provide for the wants of 500 rail passengers, and even then people will be frustrated. (The college here has 80Mbps with 1100ish students, and there's still bandwidth issues and demand for more bandwidth.)

40Mbps is actually not out of the question with good LTE coverage.

But you really don't need anywhere near that much to silence the complaints about the current performance of the system. The restrictions in place now aren't likely to be lifted when LTE is rolled out, as they have to be set for the worst case scenario, or things will get a lot worse than they are now when the train looses LTE coverage.

WiFi works just fine on moving trains and buses in many other places in the world, and for cryin' out loud it even works on planes with 500 passengers in it. So what is so special about our trains that makes it an unworkable idea? Heck even my 3G/4G MiFi service works just fine when there is signal. The issue is of making signals more available along the RoW.

Your question is answered in the article itself: airlines force you to pay for wi-fi service. That weeds out people who may use wi-fi if it's free to casually browse the Web, but wouldn't see it worth paying for. Amtrak doesn't have that filter, so everyone that wants to use it has access to it. You would probably need close to a 40Mbps connection consistently to provide for the wants of 500 rail passengers, and even then people will be frustrated. (The college here has 80Mbps with 1100ish students, and there's still bandwidth issues and demand for more bandwidth.)

The CCJPA (Capitol Corridor) has an excellent high-level description of how the system works on their website:

LINK

Thanks for that link. The explains exactly what the problem is: the units do not currently have support for 4G. I manage a fleet of buses that have WiFi service. Our WiFi became almost unusably slow on our most popular routes, until we upgraded to 4G LTE a few months back. Now, as long as the bus is in a 4G area (which is also where the largest percentage of ridership is) the service works great, even with a large number of users on it. 4G LTE will result is a large speed increase along the areas with the highest ridership, so things should improve noticeably on the NEC.

I did find it interesting that I could take the bus to Montpelier and have a better connection than I had on Amtrak out west.

They don't have the problem in the core Trunk segment.

Backhaul was a major issue during the initial 3G roll-outs and continues to be a problem outside of major metro areas where most of Amtrak's LD network lies.

There is also the possibility of using direct Sat link instead of depending on the terrestrial cellular network, which is what airlines do.

Most of the internet implementations you see on US flights are not part of any satellite link. They're from ground based skyward facing antennas. There are some in-flight technologies that use expensive satellite links for data, but that's not what you're buying on most US flights. In many cases both technologies suffer the same interruptions anyway, probably because there is little financial benefit to blanketing the world's oceans with high speed internet access. On a flight to nearby Puerto Rico we lost both tower based internet and satellite based television as the plane left the US mainland.