GNER Trains in the UK is launching a new WiFi service for commuters on its East Coast Main Line. Ten trains will be equipped with wireless internet access, so if your train actually turns up, you can let people know how late you’re going to be. You can even email pictures of the motionless countryside, if you have a camera. A further ten trains will have WiFi installed in them over the summer.
First class passengers will get “free” access (i.e. it’s included in the astronomical cost of a train ticket), whereas standard fare ticket holders will pay between UK£2.95 and UK£9.95 (€4.40 and €14.83), depending on the length of access. Could be particularly expensive in the Autumn, depending on which kind of leaves fall.
The service can operate on trains travelling up to 125 miles per hour, but given that nothing has moved on our rail network at that speed for at least 100 years, passengers should enjoy uninterrupted access.
GNER Mobile Office
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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