British Rail, although no longer in existence, is still the butt of any and all travel related jokes in the UK. Coach operator National Express is set to change that, beginning with free WiFi for all passengers on the London-to-Scotland east coast main line railway.
The company has just won the contract to operate the line and WiFi is just one of the tech innovations it plans to bring to train travel, including ticket sales via cellphone, smart cards (already in use on the London Underground under the name Oyster Card) and a website where you can actually find and buy cheap tickets (trust me – that's big news in the UK).
The WiFi infrastructure was already in place, but previously only offered to first class passengers: the plebs had to pay $20 a day. A mixture of 3G and GPRS radios and satellite connections supposedly guarantee 100% uptime, even in tunnels, and two access points in each car should support up to 40 surfers at a time.
Of course, now the kids are going to be blaring out YouTube all the time, to compete with screaming babies and cellphone-shouters. Still, it's a start.
