Connected commuters

Think it's cool to surf the 'Net via a Wi-Fi hot spot while waiting to board your flight in an airport lounge? Well, the business and commuter travel industries are poised to go one better. Wireless 802.11 Internet access is coming soon to planes, cars, trains, limos, buses and even boats.

Plagued by a brutal post-Sept. 11 downturn and ongoing terrorism fears, travel providers say they hope to win customers who want their Wi-Fi. No matter what the mode of transport, attracting new passengers and retaining old passengers is paramount.

"This is a value-add for the passenger," says Craig Mathias, principal at consulting firm Farpoint Group. Business travelers will go out of their way to pick a flight or train that has reasonably priced Internet access, Mathias says - not having to face a pile of e-mail later is a huge benefit.

The business case is unclear. Neither carriers nor wireless vendors are certain how much passengers will be willing to pay or of the ROI for necessary infrastructure spending. But that hardly dims Wi-Fi's bright outlook for business travel and commuting. "Even if it doesn't turn out to be profitable, it's still increasing ridership," says Phil Solis, senior analyst at ABI Research.

Wi-Fi trials are springing up all over the globe, from Bay Area commuter trains to a Boston luxury coach. European carriers are somewhat ahead of their U.S. counterparts. France is well into the process of rolling out Wi-Fi Internet access on its high-speed TGV train.

As Wi-Fi test markets go, the region from San Francisco up to Oakland is prime turf. The tech-savvy passengers here are likely to tote laptops with Wi-Fi adapters. It was therefore natural that PointShot Wireless last year approached the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority (CCJPA), the agency that operates a commuter train through Silicon Valley, to begin a Wi-Fi pilot. Launched last October, the yearlong trial is a partnership with the California Department of Transportation and the University of California at Berkeley.

PointShot offered a sweet deal: At no charge, the company would install its RailPoint Server, a proprietary product that combines several types of modems, an 802.11b access point, router and content cache, and a variety of antennas, both inside and on top of the train car. PointShot would manage the system from its network operating center in Ottawa.

Transparent to the commuters, the type of WAN used to connect the car's wireless LAN to the Internet would switch from a cellular data network to a satellite network, depending on which method provided the best performance at the moment. "We have not spent any pocket money on this, just my time," says Jim Allison, senior planner for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, part of the CCJPA. "We're very happy we looked as attractive as we did [as a candidate for the pilot]." PointShot declined to disclose how much it invested in the Capitol Corridor pilot.

Users need only to turn on their Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, log on through a Web page and begin working - configuration issues are minimal. So far, Wi-Fi access is available on just one train in the whole route, and that car could be anywhere on the line so passengers can't plan on using the service on a given day. "That's one of the most unfortunate things about this," Allison says. Otherwise, usage and feedback on the service, now offered for free, have been good.