3G/4G/WiFi coverage on train routes

[Puffing Devil]

Well my father lives 21 miles from London and is unable to get decent broadband due to distance from outdated BT exchange, no cable or 4g due to planning objections.

Satellite?

 

[theageofthetra]

Trees in line of sight which can't be cut down due to objections from same idiots who block mast applications.

 

[najaB]

And this is an acceptable situation 21 miles from one of the largest cities in the world in a residential suburban cul de sac? Of course it isn't its pathetic.

I don't know the details of your father's location, but I suspect that if high-speed fixed broadband isn't available it is either because (a) it isn't commercially viable to provide and the (local) government hasn't stumped up the cash to enable it under BDUK; or (b) the (local) government hasn't allowed planning permission/highways agency hasn't allowed road closures/land owners haven't granted wayleaves to allow the communications providers to install the necessary infrastructure.

 

[theageofthetra]

His is just one example. Rural depopulation amongst the young is a big issue in many parts if the UK due to lack of work opportunities-how are these communities expected to survive if a young entrepreneur can't run a business due to planning objections to a 4g mast from a retired person on a nice index linked final salary public sector pension?

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

I've been pitching this to deaf ears at NR & TOCs for a while. Especially as some of the major IP transit providers run their fibre along the railway. The mobile networks frankly don't give a toss about coverage of high traffic routes these days - just drive down any of our major motorways or take a run along the ECML or WCML & see. M2 or M20 in Kent? Forget it. Anyway, most of them are in a joint venture & don't even own the network. Besides, they're just there to return shareholder profits, customers, as in most industries these days, are merely an inconvenience.

Proposal: A privately built, investor funded, backbone network which allows trains to back haul their onboard wifi at high speed, not the existing snail speed, to the Internet. They can charge as much as they like for the wifi, they pay us an acces charge per user, or per journey or something. Base stations colocated with GSMR infrastructure.

Benefit to NR? High speed connectivity all over the railway for its own workforce, not just S&T who have access to the right "plugs". Money from leasing space on their masts. Bingo!

Benefit to TOC: Revenues from wifi. Happier pax. IP connectivity for their own use - tills, communications, rostering, stock, live travel info etc.

The existing systems like Icomera et al just don't work very well & are essentially bolted together from old tech. Icomera themselves admitted as much to me back in 2011 when I was working with them on something else.

Spinoff of that is rural areas get high speed internet over wireless by way of repeaters.

IP transit providers are up for it, sounded out investment at an early stage, they seemed upbeat, but NR & the TOCs just ignored my emails or send on a wild goose chase to talk to a real human being.

But this is the UK in 2016....we couldn't possibly let someone with a good idea work with us without making it nigh on impossible, it's "not my job mate" & "not invented here" so get lost.......

The point is that the supposed benefits to the industry are mostly already available through the signalling system. And it's not as if the trains are likely to suddenly and unexpectedly go off-route so there is no urgency to maintain constant on-line capability other than that which exists in the signalling system. Ultimately it's only worthwhile if passengers are prepared to pay the full cost. Which mostly they aren't.

 

[miami]

Satellite?

Unusable for many situations. Certainly not what anyone would call "fast". Yes, the throughput may be 10mbit, but the actual performance of many real world protocols causes issues -- try sshing into a ec2 instance over a satelite for example.

In ages past mobile phone networks used to try to cover as much as possible. Now they all cover the same area, and there's little profit in claiming they have improved their connection.

There's then the problem that many trains act as giant attenuators on mobile signals, so even if there's a signal when stood next to the line, the signal vanishes inside the train.

 

[Puffing Devil]

Unusable for many situations. Certainly not what anyone would call "fast". Yes, the throughput may be 10mbit, but the actual performance of many real world protocols causes issues -- try sshing into a ec2 instance over a satelite for example.

In ages past mobile phone networks used to try to cover as much as possible. Now they all cover the same area, and there's little profit in claiming they have improved their connection.

There's then the problem that many trains act as giant attenuators on mobile signals, so even if there's a signal when stood next to the line, the signal vanishes inside the train.

30Mbps is easily available downstream, though it is 2Mbps up. I don't see the speed issue with AWS if you're using ssh, what's the bottleneck?

I recall some trains have signal boosters (repeaters connected to an external antenna) to help mobile reception. Not sure where these are still deployed.

 

[miami]

30Mbps is easily available downstream, though it is 2Mbps up. I don't see the speed issue with AWS if you're using ssh, what's the bottleneck?

Latency. Not just when you're sshed in, but also with things based on TCP, especially if you add some packet loss.

I recall some trains have signal boosters (repeaters connected to an external antenna) to help mobile reception. Not sure where these are still deployed.

Anecdotally in my experience these don't seem to work well (on VTWC) for data.

 

[Puffing Devil]

Latency. Not just when you're sshed in, but also with things based on TCP, especially if you add some packet loss.

Kids today... don't know you're born. I remember working over crappy Kilostream links. And we had to pay the DPM for the privilege of working there, lick the card decks clean at night, etc., etc.

 

[miami]

Kids today... don't know you're born. I remember working over crappy Kilostream links. And we had to pay the DPM for the privilege of working there, lick the card decks clean at night, etc., etc.

And yet the latency on your telnet or rsh or whatever session would be way under 700ms

 

[rf_ioliver]

Have had booming 4g data in middle of nowhere in Finland.

Well we did invent it so....However the Finnish government has committed to providing total high speed mobile coverage which makes a lot of sense given that the distances and conditions for cabling to housing. In fact it has been quite normal for many years that houses in the more remoter parts of Finland (practically anywhere outside of Helsinki) that the telephone companies have removed telephone cables and replaced these with mobile connections.

There are other factors also playing into this as well, such as the break between operator and phone - people tend to buy (and have done for many years!) their phones independently of the operator.

Regarding trains, Finland was also one of the first to trial base stations on the actual train itself - IIRC, that was 15 years ago.

t.

Ian
--- old post above --- --- new post below ---

Kids today... don't know you're born. I remember working over crappy Kilostream links. And we had to pay the DPM for the privilege of working there, lick the card decks clean at night, etc., etc.

You were lucky, we had to first extract the copper from ore and string it out between two tin cans...took ages to download EBCDIC pictures

t.

Ian

 

[Puffing Devil]

And yet the latency on your telnet or rsh or whatever session would be way under 700ms

In the network, yes!

You were lucky, we had to first extract the copper from ore and string it out between two tin cans...took ages to download EBCDIC pictures

t.

Ian

Not heard mention of EBCDIC for 20 years or more! And I can still recall the Acronym without recourse to Google

 

[najaB]

Not heard mention of EBCDIC for 20 years or more! And I can still recall the Acronym without recourse to Google

Why would you - unless you were working on a System/360 or similar?