[opendtv] News: Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 9 Jul 2004 08:42:09 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/08/technology/circuits/08wifi.html?th
July 8, 2004
Destination Wi-Fi, by Rail, Bus or Boat
By GLENN FLEISHMAN
ABOARD THE KLICKITAT, on the Admiralty Inlet, Wash.
THE Klickitat, a 1927 steel ferry boat plying waters between a
19th-century port and an island harbor, may seem a quaint way to
travel - and an unlikely place to get work done. But it may be headed
for a new frontier in Internet access for commuters.
The ship is the test bed for a plan to offer high-speed wireless
Internet access on most Washington State ferry runs, serving tens of
thousands of regular commuters.
Through a federal grant, the ferry system will roll out an expanded
test of the Internet service this summer and fall on seven ships
serving the three busiest runs, covering 50 percent of the system's
ridership, or about 12 million passenger trips a year. When the first
of those routes joins the trial, the effort will become the largest
commuter Internet experiment ever.
As such experiments gather momentum, ready access to e-mail and the
Web may become increasingly common on the way to and from the office.
In the United States, nearly six million people commute daily by
public transportation, according to the Department of Transportation.
Few operators offer wireless Internet access in their stations and
terminals - much less on board - even though it is now routinely
found in many airports, hotels and coffee shops. But trials and
planning are under way in several countries to determine the
technical feasibility of offering mobile Internet access, and whether
commuters will ultimately pay for the privilege.
Providing Internet access on vessels and vehicles is not as simple as
adding it to a fixed venue, like a restaurant or even a convention
center. Boats, buses and trains have metal skins or hulls that block
wireless signals. They move, often at average speeds of 20 to 100
miles per hour, requiring a system that can rapidly and seamlessly
hand off a signal. And they could have large numbers of simultaneous
users, many of whom are already working on laptops during the voyage.
Jim Long, director of information technology for the Washington State
ferry system, said that boats on the Bainbridge Island-to-Seattle run
carry 2,600 passengers during each rush-hour trip. Based on his
observation of commuter work habits, he said, "you could have upwards
of 300 to 400 at any one time trying to access the Internet - those
are concurrent users."
Airlines, too, are looking at making Wi-Fi connections available to
passengers, and face some of the same challenges. Two competing
services, Connexion by Boeing and Tenzing, provide Internet access
(at $10 to $30 per flight) by connecting to satellites relaying
service from the ground. But the commuter projects offer the
potential to become part of a daily routine, and perhaps an incentive
for some people to abandon commuting by car.
The companies working on commuter service have taken various
approaches: relying on a combination of cellular towers and satellite
data links, erecting dedicated antennas in a line of sight or at
points along the route, or limiting service just to terminals or
stations on either end of a run.
The Washington State ferry test is one of several in the United
States and abroad. Internet access on rail was inaugurated early last
year on a route between Sweden and Denmark, and regular service is
beginning on certain train lines in Britain, including the Great
North Eastern Railway linking London with much of England and
Scotland (free for first-class passengers, about $9 an hour for
others). There are also plans to test an Internet service for
municipal bus riders in Paris.
A Canadian company, PointShot Wireless, is providing Internet service
for trials on two rail lines in Northern California and another in
Canada. So far, the PointShot tests, like the Washington State ferry
project, are free - beyond the user's investment of $50 or so to
equip a laptop with a Wi-Fi radio.
PointShot typically uses a combination of cellular towers along the
routes and satellite transmissions to maintain coverage, not always
easily. "As you move along a route, there's a different level of
coverage just depending on terrain and tunnels and mountains and
trees," said Wendy Kennedy, vice president for marketing at PointShot.
Each train's main receiver automatically switches to the best signal
in terms of speed, cost to the operator and current use on board. But
to the passenger, "all they see is that they have constant
connectivity along the route," Ms. Kennedy said. Speeds vary
constantly but are typically a few times faster than a dial-up modem,
and are far higher in receiving data than in transmitting it -
whether summoning a Web page or sending an e-mail message.
The signal can be relayed from the main receiver (ordinarily atop a
passenger car) to relay points, or bridges, atop other cars in which
service is provided. Each bridge corresponds to an access point
within the car, which distributes the signal to users.
Service can be interrupted by tunnels, or in areas that lack both
cellular coverage and a line of sight to a satellite. Ms. Kennedy
said that the company can install servers that store Web pages and
hold e-mail for transmission when the Internet connection returns,
making the user unaware of the service gap.
The challenges are even greater when the route in question is water,
as with the Washington State ferries, which operate half the
country's ferry journeys.
The Klickitat, connecting Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula
with Keystone, a small harbor on Whidbey Island, is hardly teeming
with commuters. Indeed, not a single passenger could be seen using
the service during a reporter's crossing. But the vessel offered a
test bed on which many antennas, frequencies and ideas could be tried
out.
The ferry system worked with Mobilisa, a 22-member research firm
based across the street from the ferry dock in Port Townsend, 40
miles northwest of Seattle, to obtain a $1 million grant from the
Federal Transit Administration with the help of Senator Patty Murray,
Democrat of Washington. The grant has financed the Klickitat trial
and the coming deployment on other ferries, where the service will
remain free during testing.
Mobilisa has developed wireless techniques for maintaining a constant
connection aboard the Klickitat as it moves in and out of range of
land-based antennas.
Because Keystone is a rural area of the island, there is no Internet
service on that side of the route, and it is not in a direct line of
sight with Port Townsend, eight miles away. To overcome this problem,
Mobilisa has two antennas near the ferry dock in Port Townsend - one
in direct contact with the ferry, another to relay a signal through
an intermediate antenna to an antenna on Keystone's dock. Although
the ferries have regular routes, the antennas on both ship and shore
have to be placed to allow for deviations due to tides, ship
rotation, weather and boat traffic.
The Wi-Fi signal is broadcast from a receiver on board to public
areas at all times, including during the 30-minute crossing.
Transmitters on the docks serve the car and passenger waiting areas.
On the reporter's crossing, instant messaging, e-mail, and Web
browsing worked uninterrupted at speeds comparable to those of
broadband home Internet connections while the ferry was in transit
and while docked. Even an Internet voice call worked briefly,
surprising Dr. Nelson Ludlow, Mobilisa's founder, who said the system
was not designed to handle voice traffic optimally.
Whatever the technical hurdles, one thing is clear: many commuters
would have plenty of time to use it. On the Washington ferries,
walk-on commuters on the busiest routes spend at least 30 minutes on
board twice a day, in addition to time waiting to board. Drivers may
spend two to three hours a day near or on the ferries if they travel
during rush hours. Therein lies the calculation that when it comes to
Wi-Fi, if you build it, they will come.
One route in PointShot's trials is the Altamont Commuter Express in
California, an 84-mile line between San Jose, the hub of the Silicon
Valley, and Stockton, in the Central Valley. The line reports about
1,500 daily passengers, roughly 35 percent of them carrying laptops,
and Ms. Kennedy said that most spend two and a half to five hours a
day on the train. Wi-Fi service is now available in one car on each
of the three daily runs and is typically used by 15 to 20 passengers
on each trip, she said.
One question in all the trials is what will it will cost to put such
connections in place more widely, and how that will translate into
pricing for the Internet user. Many of the trials and initial
deployments are being underwritten by grants or sponsors, requiring
little or no financial risk or even outlay by the transit operators.
Although the next steps are not fully clear, the agencies generally
plan to leave decisions on what to charge to companies that will bid
on contracts to operate the services.
Meanwhile, the Wi-Fi offering on the Altamont route has found a ready
customer in Terry Dickman, who commutes over three hours a day from
Manteca, south of Stockton, to his job at Intel in Santa Clara.
Because he knows he will have a constant but relatively slow
connection, he prepares beforehand. In an online interview conducted
during his afternoon commute (his name and e-mail address were
provided by PointShot) Mr. Dickman wrote that he avoided sites laden
with graphics that are slow to load, concentrating on work involving
relatively small text files and e-mail.
Mr. Dickman said that his life had "changed for the better" with the
Internet at his commuting disposal. "I am more productive at work and
have a better work/life balance," he wrote. That is significant,
since he is away from his wife and four children for 12 hours each
weekday between his commute and his job.
"My boss is very flexible and considers time spent on the train no
different than time sitting at my desk on my PC," he wrote. "In fact,
I was working a problem at work online when your e-mail popped up."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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