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Technology Thoughts

The Mobile worker..

In an attempt to reduce my Carbon footprint, well for a day or two, I’m trying travelling to work on the train and so far the experience is not that bad, but there is still some way to go before time on the train is truly productive.

I really need a power supply to plug the powerbook into, on some of the newer trains on the South West Trains network this is possible, but not the “Express” trains which serve the London-Southampton route.

My Vodafone 3G data card is struggling to get anyway near the UMTS bandwidth of 384 kbps most of the time it falls back to GPRS at the good old days rate of 56k. It’s strange that the 3G network coverage followed the motorway rather than the rail network, how many BMW drivers do you see browsing the web on the M3 – on seconds thoughts best not go there…

Still I think I could get used to it..

Written and submitted from the 19:00 Southampton – Waterloo train, somewhere between Fleet and Farnborough, using my Vodafone 3G network card.

6 replies on “The Mobile worker..”

I’ve had similar issues using an EVDO (CDMA) card on a train in Australia. It seemed to be so busy dealing with changes in signal strength, and switching cells, that it only occassionally managed to get near its potential bandwidth.

I travel a similar route to Guildford on a daily basis and always have problems with the Vodafone data card, especially around Woking for some reason. Struggle to even get a phone signal. The sooner rail operators offer full broadband access on board, the better.

Nick,

Ah yes.. read about that lady taking train, bus and ship to attend a wedding in Australia – only takes two months !!

The Woking 3G hle is well known. It extends across much of the west end of the town. As to dropping out to GPRS on the Teddington – Soton journey, you should try Exeter to Woking with a HSCSD card. It dropped to 19k for much of the journey. If you want to give wi-fi on a train a go, take GNER up to the North East or Scotland – and you get 13amp sockets on the trains.

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