Windows Phone Thoughts: VIA Rail Canada to Offer Wi-Fi on Trains

"VIA Rail Canada is taking Wi-Fi mobile, kicking off a four-month test of high-speed Internet service on selected passenger trains in the Montreal-Toronto corridor in partnership with Bell Canada International Inc. and Intel Canada. Bell Canada has equipped the VIA test trains with three separate wireless systems to support the passenger Internet service. Broadband service to the train is provided by high-speed data service beamed from Bell's ExpressVu satellite system. The satellite signals are fed into an onboard server provided by PointShot Wireless, an Ottawa-based start-up focused on providing wireless services to mobile markets. The PointShot server feeds the satellite signal to a Wi-Fi access point in a first-class car that users can access from laptop or handheld computers. Although a train could briefly lose signals from either the satellite or terrestrial network the PointShot system masks these outages from the user."

I find this idea really appealing, the ability to use the Internet while in motion. Unfortunately, we're not going to see this in the U.S. anytime soon, at least not on trains. According to the article, Amtrak would like to offer Wi-Fi service, but is "not financially able to do it now."