After dropping $399 for a ticket on the high-speed Acela Express from the nation’s capital to the Big Apple, train passengers expect high-speed, continuous Internet service. But that’s not happening. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amtrak trains are equipped with eight air cards linking to as many as four cell towers at a time as they zip up along the east coast from D.C., Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey and through an underwater tunnel to Manhattan. But, the tower network shares space with cellular companies, and with the growing demand from smartphones and tablets, there is less spectrum for Amtrak riders to share. Their connections are getting dropped and many are not happy.
“I agree, it can be frustrating,” Matt Hardison, the railroad’s chief marketing officer told WSJ. “We don’t want it to be that way, which is why we are aggressively pursuing all options to try to improve it.”
Amtrak launched its Wi-Fi service, AmtrakConnect, on its Acela trains in 2010.
The system relies on cellular towers along the 457-mile D.C. to Boston corridor. But Acela trains can travel as fast as 150 miles an hour, making it difficult for so-called handoffs between towers that may already offer spotty reception. Bridges and buildings also can block signals.
Amtrak said bandwidth available to its trains has declined by 40 percent over the past year, and Amtrak and its consultants acknowledge it’s constrained by the quality and number of cell sites that are along the rail line.
The railroad has been developing a new way to deliver Wi-Fi to customers, WSJ reported, and a so-called trackside wireless broadband network would deliver Internet to trains along the northeast corridor, unshackling the railroad from cellular networks.
Railroad officials say the system under development promises to be competitive with satellite-based Wi-Fi speeds airlines have been rolling out. Amtrak has been analyzing results of a prototype of a new wireless system along a 10-mile stretch of track south of Wilmington, DE. If Amtrak decides to take the next step, officials could expand the network by 30 miles next year, then perhaps 80 additional miles in 2017.
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