“IARNRÓD ÉIREANN is to test a wireless internet service for passengers on its Dublin to Cork route, starting early next month.

The trial will be used to establish demand and is likely to be followed by a public tender to equip much of the company’s main intercity lines with the necessary equipment to provide the service.

Four wireless network providers have been invited to take part in the trial, due to last for about six months. Each provider will initially be allocated a train on the Dublin to Cork line. “It’s our busiest route so it’s the most appropriate for the trial,” said Iarnród Éireann spokesman Barry Kenny.”

Read more here…

The trail installation will be for a complete trainset for the duration of the trail. After these 6 months Irish Rail will (together with Airappz)  evaluate the usage & performance data and based on this they will decide whether or not to put the provision of a fleet-wide wifi service out to public tender.

The invitation by Irish Rail was actually made around the middle of 2009 but the scope of the project has only recently been agreed.

As announced in 2008 Airappz intends to make the actual wifi access free off charge. Our purpose designed captive portal will display location based advertising and together with relavent location based services this will create sufficient revenue for us to not have to charge for the actual access.

Unlike other providers Airappz has consistently advocated free wifi access and has pioneered their own solution to enable this.

For this we are looking for a number of beta tester who will put the directory application through it’s paces and give us feedback on how to improve the functionality.

If you are interested in becoming a tester please email us.

What’s more, the coach companies can offset their costs in more creative ways than charging passengers a fee, said Evert Bopp, chief executive of wireless specialist provider AirAppz.

“Our philosophy is, wi-fi access to the user has to be free because there are other ways for the operator to make money, such as location-based services or advertising,” he said. “For example, if you’re passing by Heuston Station you would see advertising that’s relevant to businesses close to Heuston.

Once you move on, the advertising dynamically updates.”

Bopp, who has waged a long campaign for wi-fi on public transport, is not surprised that independent coach companies have been the first to offer these services here.

“Look at anywhere else in the developed world: if you go out to Silicon Valley, the buses and trams have wi-fi. In Ireland, we’re desperately lagging behind and it’s typical that it’s the private sector which is taking up the running,” he said. “I think the government should look at some kind of stimulus – that would make it attractive for business travellers to get out of their cars and use public transport more.” Private operators’ biggest competitor, Bus Eireann, has yet to show its hand on the internet issue.

The full article can be found here.

In it Evert Bopp again repeated his offer to Irish Rail to install & manage a public wifi access service on all Irish Rail routes at no cost to them. The show can be listened to here.

Some civil servant must have Googled WiMax for that answer! WiMax isn’t currently widely available in Ireland and may not be available the entire length of a train journey.

Wi-Fi is a technology that will be around for the foreseeable future. The installation costs are very low and providers like Amtrak in the UK and Thalys on mainland Europe are creating an avenue for ancillary revenues.

I ran a poll on my blog and the majority of voters said they would use it. If Iarnród Éireann deployed this service, it could make it more attractive for people to ditch the car and take the train instead. At the very least, they would be more productive, being able to get work done on the way to the office. This is extremely short-sighted on Iarnród Éireann’s part.

As well as providing for ancillary revenue, Bopp said that Iarnród Éireann could also use the Wi-Fi service to push out important information like timetable changes and new service offerings.

The full article can be read here.

Many people confuse wardriving with piggybacking—the act of logging on to an unauthorized network. This, says Bopp, should not be confused with true wardriving, which is merely the act of locating and documenting or mapping the networks.

There are a lot of negative connotations there because people mistake wardrivers with hackers, which they are not,” Bopp said. “A wardriver would never access the network. Wardrivers can detect networks without ever accessing them. All you need to do is pick up that signal and that’s enough for wardriving—that’s all the information a wardriver wants.

Bopp, who has done some wardriving, acknowledges that some wardrivers do cross the line.

But when they do, that’s no longer part of wardriving,” he said. “Wardriving in its essence has nothing to do with accessing unsecured Wi-Fi networks. It’s pure and simple an activity that will detect and map Wi-Fi networks, secured or unsecured. This can be done on foot, driving, or even cycling.

The full article can be read here.

There has been an ongoing discussion within the Irish blogger community recently on the subject of public wifi internet access on trains.

There is a growing demand for this type of service and the provision of it will certainly get more bums on train seats and off car seats. This in turn would lead to lower car usage resulting in lower carbon emisions, surely something that the government should support? I for one would be inclined to take the train rather than drive if it meant that I could sit and work while traveling.

Irish Rail doesn’t think that this is a viable option and states the following in it’s FAQ:

“Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) feels that it wouldn’t be in the public or the company’s best interest to install the current wireless technologies on
its fleet for customer use due to the limited lifespan of said technologies. Anything we install now is likely to be completely redundant within five years.

We feel customers would be better supported by obtaining their own wireless solutions, such as those provided by the mobile providers (3G and GPRS/EDGE ).

The full blogpost can be found here.