NTT Communications bringing WiFi to Japanese bullet trains in 2009

Remember that Type N700 train that became Japan's fastest in mid-2007? Yeah, well it's about to get a lot more fun to ride. Starting next year, passengers on the ultra-quick bullet trains will be able to hit up their favorite blogs and banter about aimlessly via email / IM at 270 kilometers per hour (that's 167 miles per hour for you Yanks). The service will reportedly be an extension of NTT Communications' HotSpot service, and we're told that download speeds should reach around 2Mbps. As for cost, the fees will be at the usual HotSpot rate, which runs from ¥500 ($5.73) per day to ¥1,680 ($19.25) per month, or in other words, rates you'll totally pay to stay connected on the brisk runs from Osaka to Tokyo.

[frauhottelmann @ Dec 19th 2008 10:07AM]

You can get WiFi in an ICE in Germany too, but at 300 km/h^^

[frauhottelmann @ Dec 19th 2008 10:10AM]

...from T-Mobile of course and not NTT

[Kenta @ Dec 19th 2008 10:16AM]

Yes, I have tried it and it is not usable for me. I travel time to time using ICE and never I have seen it reach 270 km/h. And specwise it can not.

[frauhottelmann @ Dec 19th 2008 10:20AM]

I actually have seen it. And BTW only the ICE 3 is capable of doing so, not ICE 1 or 2.

[dodo @ Dec 19th 2008 10:23AM]

but you can use your T-mobile Wifi at the trainstation to send an email to your gang and secretaries to notify about your delay because the ICE has some "minor" delay again ... ^^

[Kenta @ Dec 19th 2008 10:31AM]

sorry, ... you are right. Maybe just because I travel at most with ICE 2. Anyway, ... wish you a nice weekend

[Patriks7 @ Dec 19th 2008 3:13PM]

"the ICE 3 trains can reach their maximum speed of 300 km/h (186 mph) only on some stretches of line."

I highly doubt there are many of these stretches though..

[frauhottelmann @ Dec 20th 2008 6:19AM]

No, you are right there aren't many...it usually goes like 250 km/h!

[Marcelo @ Dec 19th 2008 10:47AM]

Korea has those already. KTX trains can get to 300 and have WiFi.. Although I don't know if you can reach 2Mbps (I've never used it).

[greenlight @ Dec 19th 2008 10:48AM]

Finally! Trains in Sweden have had wifi for ages and I was quite surprised that the japanese ones didn't. But is this only going in the Nozomi or all bullet trains?

[Ed @ Dec 19th 2008 10:49AM]

500 Yen for a whole day? That's pretty affordable by US WiFi standards! But on the Shinkansen, i tend to just look out because things go by so fast I get mesmerized by the speed :)

[sam @ Dec 19th 2008 12:01PM]

I don't know how it compares in the US, but here in the UK you can apparently get 3G USB dongles with £2 per day (=$3) pay as you go from two operators. (Yes there is a half-gig transfer size limit at that price, don't expect to BitTorrent or stream high-quality TV programmes, but should be ok for normal web browsing.)

Sounds like a better bet than dodgy train wifi to me (although depending on where the train is going, coverage might not be great I guess). If I get a netbook, I'd consider it for sure.

Ordinary 3G pay-monthly is way too expensive at £15/month or so - but at a one-off £30 for the dongle, then just £2 each day I need to use it, that would be worth it for the odd few days a year when I spend a long time on a train or whatever.

[greenlight @ Dec 19th 2008 12:26PM]

sam: I tried 3G data on a Hikari shinkansen and it's just not practical - you're switching towers and driving into tunnels too often for it to work.

Of course, on swedish trains they also have phone transmitters on the trains themselves so that there's always coverage, but the shinkansen seemed to lack that as well.

[AMiSH PiRATE @ Dec 19th 2008 10:49AM]

Now if only there were a way to convert bullet train speed into wifi connection speed. Cartoon logic, where are you?!

[Vagrant @ Dec 19th 2008 10:52AM]

$20 a month on the Nozomi!?! Awesome sauce!

[higeki @ Dec 19th 2008 10:55AM]

It should be free with the Nozomi, and with a cost on the Kodama and Hikari. I wonder if they'll introduce this on the Hayate or Yamabiko since those are the shinkansens I use at least once a month.

[Don Corleone @ Dec 19th 2008 11:18AM]

Why the don't we have similar high speed trains in the US?

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2008 11:51AM]

A lot of reasons. The a lot of US culture and economy is built around cars. Also, trains of all kinds make the most money when they're filled...that means that you want basically a train-load of people to go from station A to station Z and every stop in between, on the main line (big city to big city) and all the side lines (the lines that branch out into more suburban or even rural cities, towns and even villages). Europe and Asia/Japan are pretty densely populated from end to end, so such a transportation market exists. The US is actually rather sparsely populated for all it's land mass. So the farthest runs that trains like these would have to make wouldn't be all that full, and thus probably not even profitable.

And profit is another factor. The US tends to allow private companies a great deal of latitude in setting up public transportation, and thus, low-bid marketing and competition are what determine what will ultimately be economically feasible. It also often results in each city, county, state, and multi-state area courting a variety of companies which can result in incompatible systems, and ultimately a need for a lot of transfers for the customer. And people don't like that. In other countries, the government is much more heavily involved and when they use private companies they often give them large, all encompassing contracts. So you end up with less transfers and more compatibility between pass cards, tickets and such. That makes the whole thing run much more smoothly, and reach more places reliably, which means people actually USE the systems.

The last part is kind of unfortunate, but true. Europe and asia got blown to hell and back in WWII, so they had to basically rebuild their infrastructures. But, by that time, we were already in the modern word. The world had already seen the benefits of Trains, light rail, subways, and elevated trains, so they folded in an upgrade with the rebuild. The US has never had to do that en masse.

In fact the US HAS made a few forays into the high speed rail game, but they've either encountered too many expensive technical problems or haven't been profitable enough.

But with our population swelling, who knows...

[ran @ Dec 19th 2008 12:58PM]

Because our rail system is subpar, our roads are damaged, and it takes workers way too long. Take the subway for example: They are buiding one in a city where I grew up in China. They expect to have the whole system (that's all the lines) completed in the next 5 years. In NYC, the extension of ONE line will finish in 2015 which is 6 years from now. Now how can we build a quality high-speed train network at that rate? We wouldn't finish in this millenium.

And kudos to OddManOut on the long explanation.

[miko34 @ Dec 19th 2008 1:02PM]

California's getting one from L.A. to San Francisco, but it'll probably take a decade to build completely.
They also should be getting a MagLev rail from L.A. to Las Vegas.

[Link2877 @ Dec 19th 2008 5:26PM]

You know people always ask this and I always give the same answer; Japan and Europe are small as fuck compared to the U.S. How much do you think it cost them to build, maintain and operate their systems??? Probable a crap load less then it would in the U.S. Not saying it's imposable but it would take lots of good planning and lots of money which if you haven't notices very few people have a whole lot of right now.

[Xoyuji @ Dec 20th 2008 10:27AM]

@ Link2877

Japan & Europe maybe small but we don't even have rail like that on any size. The east coast is about as long as Japan why cant we build high speed rail from Boston to Richmond about 5 major cities would be on the line and its the most densly population area of the US.


"Probable a crap load less then it would in the U.S. Not saying it's imposable but it would take lots of good planning and lots of money which if you haven't notices very few people have a whole lot of right now."

Normal people arent paying for these trains and lines the governments are so the part about very few people having money right now is not a probably your just making excuses.

[ilh @ Dec 19th 2008 11:39AM]

I bet that train's a bitch to bay park with a nose that long.

I find Wifi on trains to be too slow to make good use of (apart from the first few minutes until everyone else gets on), at least on the Edinburgh to Kings Cross trains.

[miko34 @ Dec 19th 2008 12:01PM]

Well... this would be good for that super bullet train measure that passed recently in California.

Of course, when the train is finished (sometime in the 2020s), I'm sure our brains will already be directly connected to internet satellites.

[miko34 @ Dec 19th 2008 12:03PM]

I wonder how much they'll charge for satellite-to-brain internet service.

[kastonie @ Dec 19th 2008 12:05PM]

But i thought wifi topped out at 88mph......any faster than that it would be sucking wifi from me....

[Prestwick @ Dec 19th 2008 1:16PM]

I had the pleasure of using one of the pioneering Wi-Fi Rail experiments back in 2006-ish when GNER (now National Express East Coast) rolled out its wi-fi offering via the magic of satellite and 3G/HSPDA.

The good news was that coverage was mostly good from London to Aberdeen which meant that for the seven hour journey I could expect a decent service. Problem was that if you had a combination of going through an area where it'd disrupt the satellite connection AND the 3G signal then everything would just abruptly drop. Also, speeds were not that good, kind of like basic 256k ADSL back in the day when ISDN was king.

In the end, the journey went well and I only had one or two interruptions, once at Montrose and the other around York somewhere. Definitely a great (if horribly rushed) solution.

What I'd be very interested in finding out is how they're going to deliver this service to a route which goes through more tunnels than your average male porn actor. I'm talking about the bread & butter Tokyo - Osaka/Kyoto route. I'm expecting them to use a similar system to what T-Mobile is doing in the UK and Germany by siting WIMAX points trackside all along the route. That way you could provide more than just wireless internet to passengers, up to date train running stats, location and cheap comms to the drivers cab could be done via this way apparently.

[toffeeblue77 @ Dec 19th 2008 1:19PM]

I'm reading this on the train from London to Leeds, and the WiFi is free.

The technology is the same as Sweden's (see greenlight above) and location-specific ads on websites like Facebook are in Swedish. It even works in tunnels...

http://www.nationalexpresseastcoast.com/On-Board-Our-Trains/In-your-carriage/WiFi---Internet-Facilities/

[joelesler @ Dec 19th 2008 4:02PM]

Can we just have the trains in America? Wifi is nice, but can we just have the trains first?

Baby steps I say.

---
http://www.joelesler.net

[garci @ Dec 19th 2008 7:35PM]

In Europe, on the "Thalys" trains between Paris, Brussels, Cologne and Amsterdam, you get free WiFi on First Class and 6€ for an hour or 13 for the whole trip. Its based on 3G + satellite links.. Quite nifty... and the train regularly rolls at 300 KPH (190 MPH) on quite a few stretches of track.... (One engineering version of these trains actually has the speed record at 574 KPH - 3567MPH over a special stretch of a commercial track).

You can't beat the french for these kind of trains.. and while it's true that the US is huge, given the hassles of air transportation, a TGV-like system would really fit well on the northeast corridor for example ... (lets say, Amtrak's Acela but done well). NY to washington could be served in just over 1:15 minutes... downtown to downtown... Surely beats flying!

[ace587 @ Dec 20th 2008 9:40PM]

awesome idea

[Dominique Kirsner @ Dec 21st 2008 4:08AM]

The Franch bullet train TGV already started to provide Wifi service at 320 km/hour (200 mph)