52nd & West » broadband

“they wanna make a supersonic man out of me”: Surfing the web at the speed of sound (well, almost…)

Nicolas — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 23:05:07 +0000

“Fahrenheit”.

I think this is how in-flight ISPs Aircell, Row 44 or OnAir should have called their piece of hardware they supplied airlines with. But I doubt that their engineers were whistling Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” while working on their solution… or is it because it’s still light-years away from being something decently called “broadband Internet”? who knows…

Anyway…

Most of us know that airlines have been touting the possibility of in-flight Internet access for, oh, seemingly forever now.

But chances are that even the most well-traveled fliers haven’t had the opportunity to update their Facebook pages or surf YouTube at 30,000 feet, at least on a U.S. carrier. Despite industry promises over the years, Wi-Fi broadband service is available on relatively few flights. Blame technological hurdles, financial turmoil and a general reluctance by airlines to invest in upgrading fleets.

The U.S. airline industry, though, now appears serious about moving forward with Wi-Fi in the sky.

A half-dozen carriers – including airline heavyweights American, United and Southwest – are testing or implementing Internet service on select flights. Other airlines hope to roll out the technology on a broader basis later this year.

Ars Technica posted yesterday a very detailed article on the current state of in-flight Internet. If you’re interested in knowing more about « Internet access at 35,000 feet », I strongly recommend you to read this interesting review which explains how the technology works, which airlines offer Internet service, and what’s coming up.

I’ve so far not have had a chance to fly on any of those airlines which have in-flight Internet service, to try myself how good the access is. But I’ve experienced earlier today on my Paris-Brussels train trip, an other meaning of « high speed Internet » which does not amount here in Kbit/s but in Km/h (or mph)…

From theory…

Three years ago, Thalys, made the news when the company announced that it was launching an innovative service for its customers traveling between Paris and Brussels: on-board true broadband access . The idea behind it was to provide passengers traveling across national borders at 300 km/h with a continuous Internet connection on board trains.

…to reality…

Today the service is fully operational between Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Cologne and allows travelers to stay connected during their journey, which is sometimes critical when you still need to access your office’s server to rework the presentation you’ll give your clients in a couple of hours (yeah, to some extends we’ve all done that at least once).

Thalys’ wifi service allows VPN access to professional applications, sending and receiving emails from your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird), web browsing, VoIP as well as free information services (news, Thalys timetable, online ticket reservation, etc.).

Free information? Indeed, as the email and web access services will cost you a small fee (€6,5 for a 60 minutes access or €13 for an unlimited access for the whole journey – note that if you’re traveling between Paris and Brussels, a 60 minutes access is well enough) if you’re not traveling in 1^st class. In Comfort 1, travelers enjoy from a free access to all ThalysNet services.

…there is still a gap to fill

In terms of quality of service, some users and others agree to say that the service is “painfully slow”, hardly delivering more than 33k output (which is bad dial-up speed)…

So what is my feeling about this? Well, reading the news and checking Thalys’ time table on their onboard server (http://portal.thalysnet.com/) was really fast and smooth on my netbook, but for the email and web access I chose to rely on my FonJoiku Spot’s application for Symbian devices which gives me fast access to the web. And I confirm that 3G works really well at 200km/h!

So, I think that we still have some work ahead of us to set what we’ll proudly call on day “on-board/in-flight broadband Internet”

I just can’t wait to be the next Chuck Yeager who twitters at (almost) the speed of sound!

Turn you mobile phone into a secured Wifi hotspot for your laptop!

Nicolas — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 22:15:23 +0000

Who has never looked with envy at those people surfing the web on their laptop, from the gate of an airport or while travelling on board of a train?

Who has never been discouraged to purchase a 30mns Internet credit for €15 from the only local provider available at an airport lounge or at a hotel?

As for my part, I’ve experienced both situations during one of the 140 Paris-Vienna flights I took for the past two years (17,5 tonnes of CO₂… I know… I’m so ashamed). But I’ve never been so desperate to subscribe to an additional mobile contract for 12 or 24 month and get one of those “cool” broadband Internet access USB dongles you connect to your PC or Mac and which puts the world at your finger tips while on the move…

The main reason? Those mobile broadband packages cost (between €29 and €39/month). And since I already had a very convenient mobile contract with my mobile phone provider which features, among others, unlimited download allowance*, it was not worth having to pay for exactly the same thing (500MB) under a different shaped device (a USB dongle).

To that point, I just needed to figure out a way to properly “spend” those 500MB I was given every month. Most symbian devices, such as Nokia, Sony-Ericsson and Motorola, come with a software full of nice features to install on your laptop. One of those features (supposedly) allows you to connect your laptop to your mobile through a cable or a Bluetooth connection. But in most cases the result does not meet with the expectation of surfing the web at a high speed (in the best case you managed to properly configure your phone…). Surfing the web, in that case, is slow and painful.

JoikuSpot Light is a free symbian software that turns any mobile phone with a wifi connection, to a 3G WLAN HotSpot. You can thus connect your laptop or any other WLAN device to the web from anywhere using your mobile phone and enjoy 3G speed surfing!

In terms of download and upload speed, you can manage to pick at a very decent average of 850 kbps in downloads (I eventually managed to reach 1259 kbps!) and 85 kbps in uploads (peeked at 98 kbps during my speed tests on speedtest.net), which is not bad at all considering the fact that a regular home broadband Internet takes you at 2572 kbps (download) and 391 kbps (upload). So with JoikuSpot you’ll be able to listen to streaming music on Spotify, Deezer or Jiwa and enjoy from the best of youtube and dailymotion while on the move!

I’ve attached below some screen captures of the speed tests done with my laptop connected to my mobile ISP (BOUYGUES TELECOM) through the JoikuSpot mobile application and of the same test done with my laptop connected to my home Internet connection (Neuf Cegetel).

Once you’ll have this free software installed on your mobile, you won’t think twice when you’ll have to spend the week-end visiting your parents-in-law who live in a remote Internet-free location in the country… you’ll still be able, to some extend, to hide in the bathroom and make your pain public on twitter or facebook…

*which is actually not: phone service providers say “unlimited” for a 500MB download allowance… literally “unlimited”, as an adjective, means that something is not restricted or limited or seems to have no boundaries; infinite. Maybe this will be unlimited for M. Jones who only uses the Push email feature of his phone or his happy to surf the web for hours and burn his eyes on his tiny phone screen… but not for me. One more thing: Many “broadband-hungry” applications, such as “Internet Radio” will only be able to run on a wifi hotspot (mobile providers just want to make sure that you won’t be able to use more than 30MB, at most, of your 500MB).

In his study “Predicts 2009: Enterprise Infrastructures Look to Provide ‘Anywhere’ Access” Gartner analysts predict that by 2010, 90% of global wireless operators will cease to offer unlimited mobile data plans. This is mainly linked to the fact that networks are already hitting high capacity with increased customer demand, which affects the network availability and speed that users get on 3G. Data services on PCs and phones are already slowing down, and carriers cannot regularly provide the speeds that they advertise. Also, through 2010, 20% of 3G operators will be capacity-constrained, which will limit wireless network capability.