Cognitive Resonance

GNER Wifi Update

Well, I said I’d do an update testing the service so here I am – this is written somewhere just north of the Border. This time I’ve paid £4.95 for one hour’s worth of connection… which isn’t such great value.

Firstly, some technical details. The first thing I noticed is that there are actually three seperate WLANs detected: gnerwifi (unsecured and with an excellent connection), and two others, named “EC53FG” and “EC53EF”. Both of these were roughly at half strength, and were “security enabled”. As I’m sitting in the middle of Coach F, I guess there’s one access point at the end of each coach. The naming appears to be as follows: “EC##” being the train set identification number, and the last 2 letters referring to which coaches the access points cover.

You fire up your browser, which is redirected to a payment page. After having handed over your card details, you can click “start” within the browser to start your time allowance. My network details are (currently) as follows:

DNS Suffic: gnerwifi.train
IP Address: 10.101.1.217
Subnet: 255.255.240.0
Gateway, DHCP and DNS Servers: 10.101.0.1

Anyhow, to return to my earlier commments about the speed of the service. On closer examination, I can see “gnerwifi” that it uses 802.11b – so the theoretical maximum data transfer from laptop to access point will be 11Mbps. I think this is rather short-sighted of GNER, as a single coach can hold something like 70 people… if even one quarter decided to all use the net at once, it would slow to a crawl. This will be particularly important in the future, with more and more IP-enabled devices.

However, the actual data transfer rate is far from the theoretical even of 802.11b. Downloading a file of ~ 8MB varied between 1KB/sec and 10KB/sec, depending on whether we were in a remote area surrounded by hills, or in a more open area. Unsurprisingly, at 1KB/s the net is practically unusable. It’s better at 10KB/s, but still not ideal – that is only just over double regular 56K dialup…

Carrying out the speed test at ADSLGuide as we were passing near Dunbar revealed an approximate speed of 35.5Kbps and upstream of 14.9Kbps – Hmhh….

My conclusions are very much the same as before – if you need internet access on the go, it works and works reasonably well. In patches – noticeably rural and hilly areas – the service slows down considerably, but it still suffices for basic web browsing and other similar tasks, Don’t even think of doing any truly high-bandwidth tasks – it’s not worth it. Also, it is still best value for long journeys, or when included with an advance booking First Class ticket.

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So, I came home for Reading Week on Friday 3rd November with GNER. I almost always take their direct Aberdeen-London HST service from Leuchars to Peterborough, as it’s both fast and doesn’t involve a change and wait in Edinburgh (9.20, 11.20, and 4.16ish daily from Leuchars). Originally, when Wifi started being fitted to their electric fleet as part of the “Mallard” refurbishment, GNER did not mention anything about fitting it into the diesels… however, this summer, they announced that they were both ahead of schedule and would be fitting it to the HSTs.

I’ve blogged about GNER’s Wifi service previously, before I had ever had the chance to use it. That chance came last week, and I signed up for 24 hours usage at £9.95 (much better value than £7.95 for up to 2 hours). My thoughts? Well… it was certainly a novel experience browsing the web at 120mph!

First impressions – well, it wasn’t very fast. I wouldn’t even consider trying to download Service Pack 2 through it! I didn’t conduct any speed tests (perhaps next time), but I imagine at best that it wasn’t more than 3 or 4 times dial-up speeds (~150Kbit/sec, perhaps). I am not sure whether the speed has been capped per client, or whether it was simply a large number of people using the service on my train – there were certainly lots of laptops open. At times, it was rather slow – certainly comparable to dial-up. This somewhat limits its usefulness, as Web 2.0 apps demand rather more bandwidth than simple HTML. However, it was still possible to use Gmail and GCal reasonably effectively. and MSN/GAIM worked quite happily. There were occasional dropouts, as well, and not in the places – like tunnels – one might expect! In the ~4 hours I was using it, I experienced 2 or 3 dropped connections.

Overall, I am fairly impressed – I’d rate the service 8/10 for effectiveness and 6.5/10 for value for money. I think that at the moment, it’s only really worth paying for the Wifi connection on long journeys (mine lasts 5 hours) – shorter periods of time are simply too expensive. However, I am sure the technology will mature further – I also intend to conduct some more tests to find out how fast and reliable the connection actually is. The service does work as advertised, though – and that’s pretty impressive and very useful.

Hint – the best thing to do is travel First Class by booking well in advance online and buying the “GNER First Advance” tickets. The cheapest Standard ticket usually available for my journey is about £22 Single. If you book far enough ahead, you can pick up the cheapest First Advance ticket for £32 Single – £10 more expensive. Now… for 5 hours worth of Wifi, you’d be paying £10 anyhow – and in First class, there are other perks: large, comfortable seats and tables, free snacks and drinks, and a complimentary newspaper. In fact, even without Wifi, you’d make most of your £10 back just from the food and paper! Because First Class also offers free Wifi, it really is an excellent deal – and to that end I’ve booked myself onto those £32 First Advance tickets for coming back at Christmas and returning in the New Year – a total cost of £65, when a regular Saver return with Young Person’s railcard discount is almost £60. Bargain!

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Wifi – at the same time one of the most useful technologies of the last few years, and one of the most frustrating. Why?

Well, it’s useful because it allows access to the net without wires. Simple, eh? We’ve had a wireless network in my house for several years now, and although I usually plug straight into the router (I cunningly convinced my parents that the NTL cable box and our wireless router really should be in my bedroom!) it is nice to be able to connect from the living room or outdoors – though I don’t use it much.

It’s frustrating because of reception problems. My parent’s PC is located downstairs and at an angle, so the signal has to go through my wall, the roof of an extension on the back of the house, and then try and fight it’s way through the metal chassis of the PC itself. Needless to say, it isn’t very reliable… Finally, though, my father got a better aerial for the wireless card, an external one which can be positioned on the top of the router PC, and it’s much better. Which hopefully means fewer support calls for me!

It is also frustrating for a number of other reasons. Firstly, it’s pretty slow – a pain if you’re transferring files around. I’d ideally like to have a backup server running up in the loft or elsewhere (out of sound, out of mind…), but the primary restriction on this is the size of files it’d be backing up. Large digital photos, .psd files, my music… transferring this via wireless would be a pain in the neck really, and cutting holes in my parent’s house walls for Gigabit ethernet has been forbidden. Damn. The speed issues will be mitigated by forthcoming 802.11n products, but will still fall short of wired connections – and would require investment in new products which command a significant price premium (GigE cards can be bought for £15 even here in Cambridge, hardly the cheapest town in the world).

What else is there to say about Wifi? Well, in my opinion it only becomes truly useful when you’re out and about. Sure, it’s convenient at home not to be tethered to one room, but it’s truly useful when you’re out and about with a laptop or PDA. And there is the biggest problem I have with Wifi today – access away from home.

The majority of hotspots are provided on a commercial basis. There are a number of different providers in the UK including BT Openzone, T-mobile, and Swisscom. The Cloud offers access at its hotspots to both BT and T-mobile, amongst others. The problem is the cost. The individual providers have their own pricing structures, for starters. They are often complicated. They are also overpriced unless you sign up for a costly monthly subscription.

For instance, BT Openzone charges £6 an hour with a voucher (consecutive usage), or the same price with “Choice” (for renewable usage). Alternatively, they offer a “Pay as you Go” scheme for 20p a minute – £1 for 5 minutes, or the equivalent of £12 for an hour – pretty expensive (oh, if you want a day it’ll cost you £10, or £40 for 30 days). On a monthly subscription, 250 minutes will cost you £11.75 including VAT. 250 minutes is not long at all – 4 hours, 10 minutes – which makes it 4.7p a minute, then 10p per additional minute. You can get a 500 minute subscription for only £5 plus VAT – but only if you’re already a BT customer. You can get 4000 minutes for £25 plus VAT (or £60 for “unlimited usage”)… I’m singling out BT here, but it’s only typical of most providers. Then there’s the whole “roaming” idea which incurs further charges – of course, if your chosen provider isn’t at the hotspot you’re at, you have no alternative but to roam. I’ve not investigated this in detail, but I shall do…

Anyhow back to the general point – all rather complicated and frankly obscenely expensive. This kind of data plan is fine if you’re a mobile worker who is always out travelling (in which case you’d have a good case for convincing your company to pay for it anyhow), but what about the rest of us? We’re paying through the nose for service which doesn’t cost the provider any more to give us than a monthly subscription…

In my case, and I imagine most people’s, I don’t use Wifi outside the home often precisely because of the cost involved – not because I don’t want to. In fact, if you could pay “per minute” or for a resumable time period, at a reasonable cost I quite happily would do. However, I can’t – and there is no way I’m paying £11.75 for a monthly subscription which I might never use for 3 months, then use >250 minutes in one month (for instance, on holiday somewhere in the UK) and incur additional charges. A plea to mobile coverage operators – please, reduce your prices for occasional users to be more in line with heavy users. You would find far, far more of us use the service and more often, too.

GNER has recently announced that they will complete installation of Wifi to their entire fleet (including the diesel trains which I usually catch to avoid changing at Edinburgh) by the end of the summer – fantastic news. They have also cut their prices, and 24 hour access is now £9.95. As my journey takes almost 5 hours, this works out at just over £2 an hour – which is not unreasonable, given it’s on a moving train! I intend to make use of this service (or, if I can get a deal on first class for less than £10 extra, which has happened once before, use that as first class has free access). I hope that this service is a success for GNER, though I can’t help feeling that if they cut the price further (say, to £5 or so for over an hour) there would be a massive increase in usage. On top of the cost of a ticket, £10 still is fairly expensive if you’re travelling over just over 2 hours (120 mins is £7.95). Shorter time periods are also pretty expensive – £2.95 for 30 minutes. Finally, what about commuters or regular travellers? Costs will quickly mount up…

I think that Wifi in the UK still has quite some way to go before it truly takes off, and cutting access prices is part of this.

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