Quotes of the Day
Frank's fancy lincoln has everything a road warrior could want: plush leather seats, extra legroom and a sleek fold-down desk that can be positioned just so. There's a bottle of spring water in the cup holder to my left and a pile of individually wrapped Life Savers under the armrest. A screen suspended from the ceiling is playing a DVD. But here's the real perk of this ride: I can surf the Web on my laptop from the back-seat of this automobile while Frank, the driver, takes me wherever I want to go.
I'm online thanks to a wireless hub in the trunk, a silver dollar-size antenna mounted behind my head and the wi-fi card built into my computer (an X40 mininotebook from IBM). It's just like jumping online at Starbucks, and it lets me go wild multitasking — catching up on e-mail and otherwise staying productive while in transit. Rarely am I trapped at a coffee shop, concerned that my workday is slipping away, but the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway can kill an entire afternoon.
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Carey International, which owns Frank's limo, has been testing mobile wireless hot spots in half a dozen of its custom sedans in four cities since the spring, and customers love it, according to CEO Devin Murphy. For now, the cost for the service is included in the standard fare; soon the company hopes to launch "Mobile Office," designed by In Motion Technology, across more of its fleet. First, however, it needs to figure out the business details, Murphy says. It costs $1,000 to $2,000 to equip each car, an investment predicated on an iffy business model. But Murphy wants to be out in front with the technology. "We definitely think we're ahead of the curve," he says proudly.
He's not the only one who sees mobile wi-fi as a way to drive customer satisfaction. Wi-fi services are popping up on planes, trains, buses and ferries as operators seek to meet the growing demand for anytime, anywhere Internet access — and to gain a competitive edge. Analysts expect "wi-fi in motion"--a variation on the kind of hot spot that's been sprouting up in airports, hotels, coffee shops and truck stops — to be widely available in just a few years.
For quite a while, airline passengers have been able to surf the Web via in-flight phones. But airlines embracing wifi aim to make Web surfing more practical. Last May Lufthansa introduced a high-speed wi-fi Internet service called FlyNet on flights between Los Angeles and Munich. Its Charlotte, N.C.--Munich and San Francisco — Munich routes will have it by the end of the year, and the airline wants its entire fleet equipped within two years. Scandinavian, Singapore and at least half a dozen other airlines have announced plans to follow suit.
Lufthansa's partner, Connexion by Boeing, uses a proprietary two-way satellite network, with antennas mounted on the wing and access points inside the cabin, to enable flyers to surf at 30,000 ft. (Wi-fi doesn't interfere with plane communications because it operates on a different part of the spectrum, 2.4 GHz. In fact, it gives the airline a new way to talk to ground and maintenance crews.) The system takes about 10 minutes to boot up, but it's worth the wait; download speeds are comparable to a middling DSL connection, around 300 kilobits per second. Upload speeds are about twice that of dial-up, or around 100 kbps — not as good as the 700 kbps or so I clocked during my last session at Starbucks, but not bad, and enough to justify Connexion's fee ($10 for half an hour of access, $30 for the entire flight).
Given the financial woes facing U.S. carriers, few have the resources right now to invest in wi-fi; most will probably wait for Verizon to launch an in-flight wi-fi service that makes use of its existing Airfones network, sometime in 2005.
Rail operators, meanwhile, are beginning to take a hard look at the wireless Web. In Northern California, Canada and Britain, train companies are testing or preparing to launch their own wi-fi services.
Take, for example, the wi-fi car on the Altamont Commuter Express, which runs between Stockton, Calif., and San Jose. The service makes use of satellites for incoming Web traffic, but to keep costs down, it uses the nearest cellular network for outgoing. There are a few dead zones where you can't connect at all (a tunnel, a mountain pass), and connection delays can cause virtual private network (VPN) connections to time out. Still, users say they are grateful for any opportunity to stay connected on their way to work.
Kirk Van Katwyk, a software developer who lives in Tracey, Calif., says having Net access during the 90 minutes he spends on the train twice a day means he can get a head start in the morning and focus on the kids as soon as he arrives home at night. "I have dial-up at home, so I'm used to slow connections," he says, "and you get a feel for where it's spotty, so you plan around it. Because it's free, I think we can't complain."
LimoLiner, a luxury bus service between Boston and New York City, added wi-fi a few months ago, hoping to lure some business away from the air shuttle. But the service can be painfully slow, mainly because the wi-fi network onboard uses a cellular link to reach the Internet — for both downloads and uploads — and the cell networks along its travel route have not yet been upgraded for high-speed data.
They will be soon. Verizon, for example, is in the midst of rolling out its Broadband Access network nationally, but so far it's up only in Las Vegas, San Diego and Washington. The service promises up to 700 kbps — several times faster than what I'm getting here in the back of Frank's Lincoln. When all this bandwidth becomes widely available to LimoLiner, Carey cars and other roving hot spots, experts say, mobile wi-fi will be a lot more compelling — consumers might even be willing to pay for it.
Or they might not have a choice. Right now most mobile wi-fi services are free, but that will change as public transportation agencies look to commercial wireless-service providers like Sprint and T-Mobile (which does Starbucks' wi-fi) to take over. Three commuter-ferry runs serving Seattle, scheduled to have wi-fi trials under way by year's end, hope to have a brand-name provider onboard next summer.
Those who can't wait for wi-fi on the move can subscribe directly to a cell carrier's data service. But it's generally more expensive: Verizon charges $80 a month for Broadband Access, plus $149 for the modem. Wi-fi is more economical and accessible — especially as it's built into more and more laptops and PDAs. And it couldn't come a moment too soon. Security checkpoints and choked up highways have made traveling a drag. Wi-fi just might smooth the ride.
- MARYANNE MURRAY BUECHNER