Railway Wireless LAN Services

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As the race to secure premium wireless LAN hotspot real-estate intensifies attention has turned from static locations to transport environments. While train stations and airports have been identified as potentially lucrative hotspot locations the time spent by travellers at these terminals is but a mere fraction of the time they spend in-transit on board a train or a plane.

In Europe alone passengers will spend an estimated 4.5 billion hours travelling on trains in 2003. Unlike their airline counterparts these travellers are currently not offered any form of entertainment or visual information service while en route. Meanwhile the growing band of laptop-carrying mobile workers are left to rely on relatively slow cellular data connections.

In their battle with low-cost airlines train operators are now turning to wireless LAN technology to fill these gaps and bring both passenger-facing and back office services into the 21st century. For this reason solution vendors and service providers are now scrambling to tap into these 'captive' transport hotspots. As a result train operators are now faced with a choice of unproven and semi-proven technologies and business models.

Some of the key questions the rail industry is asking of W-LAN services are:

· Which technology solution will deliver the right mix of data speed and reliability?

· Who should pay for the new wireless infrastructure?

· Will passengers pay for on board entertainment and access services? If so, how much?

· What services can/should be offered?

· What types of train and journey are most suited for wireless services?

· What impact will the new wireless networks have on existing rail network operations?

Through executive interviews with key vendors, service providers and train operators Railway W-LAN Services attempts to answer these and many other questions. For the first time the report also gauges the size of the potential market for Railway W-LAN hotspot services and highlights some of the crucial factors that will impact on the speed at which these services achieve market penetration.

From the W-LAN solution vendors' and hotspot service providers' perspective, the report addresses the following vital issues:

• How interested are train operators in offering wireless LAN services to their passengers?
• Who has responsibility for installing communications infrastructure on trains?
• Who should brand end-user services - the train operator or a service provider partner?
• Which train services/routes should be prioritised?
• How can station-based and train hotspot services be combined into a coherent and attractive offering to passengers?
• How can on board W-LANs be leveraged for internal train operations?

If you are a wireless solution vendor, public W-LAN services provider, train operating company, rail network operator, public transport agency or travel-related content provider Railway W-LAN Services can offer you an intelligent appraisal of this nascent market to enable you to make informed investment decisions.