Although my home is in London, I recently had the pleasure of riding the Acela down the Northeast corridor from New York to Washington, DC while on a trip to the U.S. The ride itself was smooth and unremarkable, though I was struck by how poor the Wi-Fi connection was on the train and found it impossible to work or play - much less send an email with an attachment ready for my following morning’s meeting in DC. This problem is not unique to Amtrak - or even to the United States. As a railway expert, I know that this is unfortunately a global phenomenon. While many railway systems today are focused on upgrading the physical infrastructure and modernizing the on-train experience for their passengers, what gets lost in that transformation is the critical connectivity piece. In fact, connectivity is a top 5 issue among rail challenges and one that is often placed on the backburner when other modifications take the forefront. This is partly because mobile operators, while keen to win the railroad, find meeting demand exceptionally difficult and the business case almost impossible. Mobile was just not designed for rail.
But this poses a dilemma for a lot of travelers commuting along the busy Northeast Corridor as they attempt to catch up on work, shop, watch that new series, and tend to other matters. They spend hours of their valuable time commuting on the train each day but are often plagued with unreliable internet and left disconnected while traveling. The frustration is at a fever pitch and the White House and Congress have homed in on this issue, mandating that Amtrak improve the customer experience and use high-speed connectivity to encourage people back onto America’s railways. Although the U.S. remains a leader in many respects, Europe has focused on the modernization of its railways while the U.S. still lags behind. The reality is that American train Wi-Fi bandwidth is barely usable, let alone meeting customer demand, and rarely offers more than limited connectivity, usually with continuous disruptions.
Here in the UK, demand for bandwidth on the railway network continues to grow exponentially, particularly as leisure and business passenger numbers begin to recover close to pre-pandemic levels. In a recent customer satisfaction survey to better understand attitudes toward connectivity on rail, we found that 62% of young people in the UK between 16 and 35 would be more likely to consider taking the train than other modes of transport if reliable Wi-Fi was provided by the train company. In that same sample, up to a third of respondents were not confident that they would have access to reliable on-board Wi-Fi coverage when traveling by train. It’s no surprise that we live in a time where a connected journey is not just a luxury, but a necessity.
Productivity on the go has become increasingly critical to our daily lives. With increased flexibility in the workplace and an end to lockdowns, both leisure and business travel have skyrocketed globally in the last few months. As more and more companies adopt hybrid and remote models of working, and large centralized office locations become the exception and not the norm, access to reliable and fast connectivity is a traveler’s expectation.
Unfortunately, the current reliance on traditional cellular carriers to power on-board Wi-Fi means there is limited bandwidth shared between large numbers of passengers on trains like Amtrak. Not to be confused with mobile 5G, which was designed for individual customers to share the available bandwidth with no certainty over coverage or throughput. Rail-5G was designed for rails by railway experts to give that certainty of 100% coverage and an average of 1Gb/s to power the on-train Wi-Fi so customers can enjoy the same connectivity that they would at home or at the office. Today, train operators hope mobile companies will deliver 5G, but that technology is hindered by the overall lack of coverage from a constantly moving train across different terrains, which exacerbates the overall cost of a reliable, strong, and consistent connection.
Train operators already buy mobile data at 50-80 cents per gigabit. While mobile throughput during peak hours cannot offer a tenth of the required bandwidth, the train operators cannot afford the data fees, and the operators could not deliver it anyway! As a result, customer demand cannot and will not be met for many years.
Americans should not have to wait for cellular providers to invest in this technology to meet demand, and thankfully they don’t have to. Rail-5G has already been deployed in the UK and Europe and is providing reliable gigabit connectivity at exceptionally low costs and even lower impact to the environment.
So, what exactly is Rail-5G? Rail-5G is a safe, rapidly deployable, sustainably powered, wayside internet network for railways, which is placed in stall along the wayside. The technology uses poles and antennas that can be solar powered along the wayside to guarantee coverage, regardless of whether you are in a deep tunnel, or crossing a long bridge. Because Rail-5G requires no structural changes to the railways itself and can be deployed on existing infrastructure, it also dramatically reduces the red tape that would otherwise impede deployment. Additionally, the network automatically gives passengers access to an average of 1Gb/s, which riders can use to conduct live conference calls, VR gaming, and speedy downloads all at a lower cost than cellular data. Rail-5G is currently the world’s first and only solution deployed on operational passenger railways, capable of delivering over a gigabit of bandwidth that offers a ‘net zero’ solar-powered solution as the most cost-effective technology that is wholly dedicated to train travelers and railway systems.
This technology is already working in the UK and Spain, and it has the potential to revolutionize the way we travel in America. It can increase speed and efficiency, improve safety, enhance the passenger experience, and be more environmentally friendly. Because the technology is light and low-powered, it can also be powered by renewable energy.
Going into 2023, Congress and the White House are focused on modernizing America’s infrastructure. But those improvements shouldn’t be made halfway, and the connectivity piece is just as critical as the system upgrades needed to bring American railways back to the luster they once had. As lawmakers look to modernize rail, Rail-5G should be a top solution that can help power the country into a new era of connectivity across railways.
