subject: Mobile Internet Services For Inter City Train Passengers [print this page]
VIA Rail Canada was one of the first rail companies in the world to provide mobile internet services to its passengers in 2006. The service is provided on its 42 trains in its central Canada corridor between Windsor Ontario and Quebec City covering about 700 miles. At the outset the service used a combination of satellite and a pair of 2G mobile connections. In 2010 the service was revamped to use a pair of 3G mobile connections; abandoning the satellite connection entirely. Service was fair to good according to accounts I have found on the internet.
A complete upgrade was done over the course of 2011 and 2012. The new service is installed on the 42 train fleet and is comprised of 6 aggregated HSPA+ mobile connections, an onboard server and controller, in coach passenger access point, and a wireless mesh network connecting all coaches.
VIA is marketing this service as part of its Human Way to Travel theme; stressing the service as a productive use of journey time to work or to use the internet for leisure such as social networking, booking things at destination, finding information on things to do at destination, or just reading online newspapers.
I have had the opportunity to travel many times on business and for pleasure on VIA Rail and I have always been impressed with the overall performance of the mobile internet service; which is currently offered on a complimentary basis. I have been able to work on files through a VPN connection to my office servers; editing and updating text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. Also accessing web mail systems such as Gmail is a breeze. Browsing the web is also quite fast. Other things I have done are access streaming music services such as Accuradio and Tunein without a hiccup. I have viewed and updated my web photo albums on Picasa without difficulty. I have also done some online shopping. I have even observed passengers using Skype video calling. Streaming video is hit and miss however in this environment and sites such as YouTube are blocked for performance reasons and to preserve bandwidth. Understandable in this shared mobile environment. But you can still access news media video sites such as CNN or CBC; but as I mentioned videos can be hit and miss.
So as a user experience goes it is quite good for a free service. How long will it be for free though? As can be imagined it may be costly to provide. VIA estimates that over 20,000 passengers use the service and that traffic is reaching over 1 terabyte per week on average. Twitter feedback is generally positive as well supporting my own experience.
As with any mobile network there are zones along the way where performance may drop off; but to VIAs credit they indicate these known areas in their information about the service. One area is along Lake Ontario where performance goes from very good to good or fair. But at 100mph, these areas soon zoom by and performance picks up quite quickly.
Most trains I have taken are 4 cars long and I would estimate that about half of the passengers are using the service. This would be anywhere from 80 to 100 connected users on a full train. I have made several measurements with tools such as Speedtest. This gives you an idea of in the seat experience. My average download speed measured is about 2.75mbps with peaks of 5mbps and higher. Upload speeds average around 1mbps and peaks of 3mbps do occur. I have done these measurements with both a Windows laptop and my Samsung tablet. These speeds are adequate for what the service is intended to be. According to VIA it is best used for web browsing and email; but by my experience you can accomplish a whole lot more.
So overall the VIA Rail wireless internet service is reliable and fast. VIA has also recently introduced a media portal on some of its trains to compliment the wireless internet service. This portal provides daily news highlights and a few rerun TV shows and documentatries. This indicates VIAs commitment to developing and improving this service for its passengers.
I do recommend that you try VIA and its wireless internet service if you happen to be in their service area. Train travel is far less hectic than flying and can be a productive use of time as well.
