Live Test: Thalys WiFi
Magyarul a pendolino.blog.hu-n.
On-board WiFi has been a big hype among premium/high-speed rail providers, as they expect more business travellers from introducing the new service. The Belgian-French-Dutch-German Thalys has been testing its system since 2005, the British Virgin Trains and the US Acela Express also have plans. This wouldn’t make much sence on a traditional railway in the era of mobile (as in GSM/UMTS) internet, but the high speed trains travelling through 2+ countries and in tunnels can actually use an on-board system.
The technology is the following: the trains connect to a ground relay through a satellite connection, and repeaters are placed inside tunnels to make the connection continuous, as you can see on the picture from Thalys below.
The Thalys business model: 60 minutes for 6,5 euros or unlimited for 13 euros; free access in 1st class.
If I manage to publish this post, that would mean that the connection is pretty stable, as I am currently writing on a Paris-Amsterdam service. I measured 24/8 Mbps down/upstream, and while it’s true that there is connection even at 300 km/h and in tunnels, but it often disconnects in normal-speed tunnels like Antwerp station and Schiphol Airport. There is an electric socket on all 1st class seats (and on all classes on the refurbished trains coming this year for HSL Zuid), but it is a bit unreliable.
The extra feature is geolocation, as known from flights and the railjet. The screenshot below shows our train approaching Antwerp central station at 153 kph.
The map shows perfectly that the main mission of the Thalys brand is to exploit the HSL between Paris and Brussels. From this line, trains branch to nearby cities on partly traditional lines for journeys of 1-4 hours alltogether.
We are arriving at Amsterdam Centraal, check out my Flickr account for more images of Thalys or Paris.
