Wi-Fi on Long Distance Trains?

[PVD]

Sometimes when the population density is too low, companies won't put up cell towers. Also, there are areas that are off limits for environmental reasons like parts of the Adirondack Park Preserve land in Northern NY. You can go from North of Lake George almost to Plattsburgh on I-87 with no cell service. Or a half hour drive in towards Lake Placid before you get service again. Thank the heavens for satellite radio!

 

[Triley]

I looked into this a bit and from a technical view it seems like Amtrak should be able to offer substantially better service than personal cellular by way of external antennas, signal amplifiers, channel bonding, and provider hopping.

Just so you know...on my last Regional trip there were several times in Virginia where my phone had no signal or a 1x signal, and I was able to use the wifi to check a few schedules and train status via Amtrak.com/the app perfectly fine... I don't know if you've tried the service lately, but many of the Regional cafe cars have improved greatly, from my experience.

The real problem is, and it's something I preach all the time, you need to remember there could be upwards of 400+ people onboard, and many are sharing the same lone signal. There's only so much that can be done, and I really don't expect speeds to every be that blazing until we get a true 4G (NOT 4G LTE) technology. See this link http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/4g-vs-lte/

Service on the corridor? Slow, depending on the train. Service in Virginia? Beautiful!

 

[Anderson]

True. One thing Amtrak has done in their latest wifi update is indicate how many devices are connected, something that does relate modestly to the speed of the connection.

 

[afigg]

Just so you know...on my last Regional trip there were several times in Virginia where my phone had no signal or a 1x signal, and I was able to use the wifi to check a few schedules and train status via Amtrak.com/the app perfectly fine... I don't know if you've tried the service lately, but many of the Regional cafe cars have improved greatly, from my experience.

The real problem is, and it's something I preach all the time, you need to remember there could be upwards of 400+ people onboard, and many are sharing the same lone signal. There's only so much that can be done, and I really don't expect speeds to every be that blazing until we get a true 4G (NOT 4G LTE) technology. See this link http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/4g-vs-lte/

Service on the corridor? Slow, depending on the train. Service in Virginia? Beautiful!

I agree. I think many here who are knocking the Amtrak Wi-Fi system don't realize that it is indeed a commercial grade system with multiple antennas for communicating with multiple service providers. The challenge is that an Acela or Regional with 200, 300, 400+ simultaneous WiFi users in a compact space overloads the capacity of the 3G/4G data links at the one or two cell towers near the NEC tracks. Then when trains pass each other by in opposite directions, there is a brief time with 2 trainsets of 100s of people that might each be getting data from the same cell tower.

Which is why in the FY15 budget and Five year plan, there is discussion of a project to investigate adding a dedicated network along the NEC.

On the NEC, demand for Wi-Fi service has been extremely strong, leading to over-subscription of bandwidth in an already capacity-constrained environment. To address this need, Amtrak has begun a program to test the feasibility of a dedicated trackside network to deliver true broadband Wi-Fi. Such a network could deliver sufficient bandwidth to allow customers to stream videos, download and stream music, and perform other activities that are not possible with existing technology. This program will be tested in FY15 and, if successful, will be extended initially between Washington and New York beginning in FY16.

Of course, Amtrak does not own the tracks from New Rochelle to New Haven, so any trackside network on that portion will be up to MNRR and CDOT. But in FY16, there may be a notable improvement in Wi-Fi speed on the southern half of the NEC. However, since projects like this always slip their schedule, probably won't be deployed until the end of FY16 or in FY2017.

 

[chakk]

There are also several steep river canyons on the CZ where both cell and satellite signals are interrupted