« SoCal Utility Finally Opens Up Poles | Main | Anchorage Man Uses Free Wi-Fi, Has Computer Seized »

February 23, 2007

Slowdowns on Train-Fi

By Glenn Fleishman

The rush to put Wi-Fi on trains has slowed in a couple of places in the US: Down in Florida, the Tri-Rail system won’t choose among three potential vendors to put Internet access via Wi-Fi on board its trains. Rather, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority has reached out to three counties (Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade) to integrate all their efforts at large-scale Wi-Fi together.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, I wrote a few days ago about a trial of Nomad Digital’s gear on the Capitol Corridor train line. While four firms were selected last year to test their respective approaches on the CC line, Nomad is the first to carry out a test, in that case using a train borrowed from Caltrain (which runs in the southwest SF Bay). Caltrain tested Nomad’s service back in July 2006; vendors were expected to test their approaches during 2006 on the CC line. There’s no word on when Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which operates the CC line, will proceed with additional tests or a formal RFP.

This slowdown in US train-Fi rollouts doesn’t necessarily bode well or ill for other, much larger deployments in the UK, Sweden, and The Netherlands.

Posted by Glennf at February 23, 2007 1:11 PM

Categories: Rails

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://db.isbn.nu/mt3/mt-tb.pl/4411

Comments

Posted by: Ross Parsons at May 3, 2007 7:59 AM

Posted by: RJC83 at February 28, 2007 8:47 PM

Post a comment