wifi Archives - Page 2 of 7

April 25, 2017

You have been using too much wifi

I’ve noticed that GWR (who were First Great Western) have started to limit their customers’ use of wifi. Three years after free wifi was introduced on their high speed trains, they’ve realised that it’s very popular and have implemented restrictions.

Back in 2007 I wrote an article, This is the age of the train… talking about the refurbishment by FGW, then I said

Do you think I should point out to First Great Western that some train operators provide free wireless on their trains, or do you think that would be pushing it?”

After seven years in 2014, it looked as though they finally listened and added wifi to their carriages on their high speed services from Bristol to London. Back then when trying it out I discovered.

I also asked the question:

Will the travelling public use the wifi, what with 4G and 3G so much more commonplace than back in 2007?

Well it certainly looks like they have been using it, hence the restrictions that GWR have put in place.

It’s nice that they also let you know how it is being used and how much bandwidth is available.

It isn’t surprising that they need to do this, as technically I can’t see them being able to increase the bandwidth easily, so it make sense to restrict usage.

Having said that 15MB is not very much, not in this day of HTML e-mail messages, attachments, Twitter, Facebook and so on…

Well at least it’s still free. Hey Cross Country are you listening?

Me, well I still using my own 4G connection, it’s faster and unlimited data is greater than 15MB.

August 10, 2016

Wifi on the tube

Finally managed to sort out getting wifi access on the London Underground through my Three account on my phone. You need to set it up above ground, which I did, but didn’t quite get my password right, so when I was down on the tube, it didn’t work the first time. After resetting my password I was able to connect to the underground wifi.

It only really works at the stations on the tube, not in the tunnels. However with the short time between stations you can still do stuff like read web sites, do the Twitter and send e-mail.

What I find it most useful for is tracking train times as I return to Paddington after working in London.

May 27, 2016

Melting the Wi-Fi

Back in the early noughties I remember attending edtech conferences and the wifi failing to cope with the number of delegates. That wasn’t surprising, they were often using a single wireless access point and when sixty plus edtech delegates hit the event with their laptops and PDAs it wasn’t much of a surprise to find the lone access point failing to deliver any wifi.

Even today I have been to events where the wifi struggles as delegates with their laptops, iPads, smartphones connect to the wifi. It is partly about the number of devices, it is also about how they are using the connection, refreshing twitter, uploading photographs, streaming video like Periscope. I also think that some people may take advantage of the fast connection (sometimes inadvertently) to download updates, podcasts and video.

At the recent UCISA Spotlight on the Digital Capabilities event in Birmingham, the conference centre wifi, which in theory could cope with 250 wireless clients, failed to deliver a stable consistent wifi connection. I found that if my laptop was connected to the wifi, it not only took time to get a connection, but every so often the connection would drop. I would say that when I had a connection it was fast and consistent. I felt lucky that I could still tweet and upload photographs using my phone on my Three 4G connection. I was getting over 60Mb/s on that connection in the main auditorium. I was quite pleased that the seats in the auditorium had tables and power sockets.

The thing is, a conference with delegates from the edtech world are probably going to melt the wifi as most conference centres don’t plan their capacity on the extremes. For most events it probably works just fine. Personally since those early days I have come less and less to rely on the conference wifi, using a 3G dongle, 3G tethering, a 4G WiFI Hotspot to my current 4G tethering. This means that not only do I not worry so much about melting wifi, but it frees up the bandwidth for somebody else, and I think I might a pretty heavy user of bandwidth!

April 21, 2016

Haven no 4G, well not quite no 4G

Though I have been pleased with the 4G coverage I get from Three at home in Weston-super-Mare and at work in Bristol, as well as travelling. I was pleased with the coverage I got recently in Dublin, but I didn’t expect anything less.

Going on holiday down to Cornwall I did wonder if I would be getting any coverage at the Perran Sands Haven resort we would be staying at. Checking Ofcom’s coverage map it was apparent that there wasn’t much hope.

Arriving at the resort I wasn’t too surprised that in the caravan there was no signal of any kind. I was a little surprised to find that climbing the sand dune next to us, I could get a 4G connection! Not too practical to climb a dune to stream Netflix.

There was supposed to be free wifi in the central hub, but as mentioned in a previous post about the Haven wifi, my expectations about this weren’t too high, and I never did manage to see the free wifi network let along connect to it.

I wasn’t too worried about having a connection to the internet whilst on holiday, I was quite happy to leave the Twitter for a while, I certainly wasn’t going to worry about e-mail, but it would have been nice to be able to stream some video, or read the news. So in the end I watched the occasionally bit of live television and I also read books and newspapers.

January 3, 2016

Tech Stuff – Top Ten Blog Posts of 2015

Not too many posts on the tech blog this year, surprised though that the post Google Glass is Dead, or is it… didn’t make the top ten!

Looking at fonts especially those designed for comic strips was the tenth most popular posting in 2015. Written in 2010 it was about the excellent Comic Book Fonts available. Read the post Comic Book Fonts.

Thinking about the Apple TV back in 2012 was the ninth most popular post on the blog. Apple TV Thoughts was quite a long post on my reflection on the Apple device.

apple_tv-q410-angled-lg

The eighth post is from 2008 when Apple added free episodes to the iTunes Store. The high ranking for this post is probably down the blog post title: Free iTunes TV Shows (on UK iTunes Store).

A few years ago my HP printer died when I replaced the inks. The seventh most read post is about my dead printer. My printer is dead!.

HP PhotoSmart B110a

I haven’t done a podcast choice for a while now, but the sixth most popular post on the blog was the second in the series, Podcast Choice #02 – Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4. Quite a popular post as people seem to keep wanting to have my copies of the shows I have downloaded over the years through iTunes.

Comic Life is one of my favourite apps on the Mac, but once I lost my styles and that is at number five. Where are my Comic Life Styles?

Wifi makes an appearance at number four, with my experiences at a Haven Holiday Camp. Haven no wifi.

More Wifi this time with my experiences with BT Wifi networks resulted in the third most read post, called I don’t like BT FON.

In November 2014, we finally got free wifi on First Great Western trains, and my post about this, Finally, free FGW wifi on the train was the second most popular blog post in 2015.

Cadbury Twirl Bites QR Code

I use to post a lot of posts on QR Codes and the most popular post the year was this one from January 2015 about the ones you found on Cadbury chocolate bars. Cadbury QR Coding and Twirling.

Happy New Year and all the best for 2016.

December 4, 2014

It’s no wonder…

I am not surprised that people can sometimes go over their data limits with modern smartphones such as the iPhone.

I was on the Edinburgh Tram system the other day and it offered free wifi, so I connected and signed in. A little disappointed that there was a 20MB data limit on the free wifi

I was astonished to see the data usage on my phone gobble up the data so fast. Within seconds I had already used 3MB, and all I was doing was watching the sign in page.

I am guessing that the phone was doing something in the background, probably checking e-mail, but what this does show is how much (and how fast) smart phones use data. You can start to imagine the bills if you were using your phone abroad or on a limited data contract.

November 14, 2014August 8, 2019

Finally, free FGW wifi on the train

As I write this, this morning, I am using the free wifi courtesy of First Great Western on their High Speed Trains.

You have been able to use wifi on their Cotswold line Adelante trains for a while now, but FGW announced last year they were finally rolling out wifi across their fleet of High Speed Trains on the Great Western mainline. The carriages are been revamped and upgraded and when they are they are having wifi fitted. You can tell if your carriage has been upgraded as they have white domes fitted into the roof.

The speed, as you might expect travelling at 125mph is inconsistent, but having done a speed test I was hanging to get between 5-9 Mbps which is more than reasonable. I was also able to stream video using YouTube and iPlayer. CrossCountry for example block streaming video services on their “you have to pay for it” wifi. Upload speeds were less than 1Mbps, so you may not want to spend your train journey uploading photographs and video.

fgwtrain

The train this morning is quite empty, it will be interesting to see how the experience changes as the train fills up as we head to London. I suspect I might be the only person using it at this time, what would happen if we had 84 people in the carriage all trying to watch BBC iPlayer.

As I travelled down the line, you noticed variation in the speed and experience. As I would have expected, the connection was quite flay as we went through the Box Tunnel between Bath and Chippenham.

Over the last few years I have written quite a bit about travelling and connectivity, both in terms of wifi on trains, but also using 3G (and now 4G).

Back in 2007 I wrote an article, This is the age of the train… talking about the refurbishment by FGW, then I said

Do you think I should point out to First Great Western that some train operators provide free wireless on their trains, or do you think that would be pushing it?”

After seven years, it looks like FGW finally listened…

Again in 2010 I wrote another article about train travel and communication

As I travel I like to try and get some work done in the time I have available. One key aspect of my job is communication and for that I need a decent internet connection. First Great Western, unlike some other train operating companies does not provide wifi on their services.

I went onto say

One thing I have noticed though is that though my 3G connection from Bristol to London is pretty good, travelling on the Voyager trains from Bristol to Birmingham, the signal is really poor. I initially thought this was just down to the route, but I have heard that the main issue is the construction of the train and the metallised windows. This basically blocks the 3G signal!

At this time, CrossCountry did not provide wifi, and I discussed this a few months later after the previous post.

I did wonder why CrossCountry Trains didn’t put in wifi as you find on the East Coast Main Line services and Virgin Trains Pendolino. Well it appears that providing wifi was part of their Franchise agreement with the Department of Transport. CrossCountry Trains was suppose to have wifi in place by November 11th 2009. They failed to meet this deadline and the revised deadline of the end of January 2009.

Eventually CrossCountry did put wifi into their trains, which I discovered in 2012 when I travelled with them to Birmingham,

I realised it must have been some time since I last travelled with Cross Country as on my most recent trip with them I was astonished and surprised to find that there was wifi…

A year later I did moan a little about the flakiness of their wifi and why I wasn’t going to renew my subscription.

My main reason was that the last couple of hours was rather flaky and I often had dropped connections. With that kind of connectivity then I might as well rely on 3G and not pay any extra money.

I am still a little astonished it has taken First Great Western until 2014 (and it won’t be complete until 2015), over eight years, to put wifi into their trains, they know that their customers wanted it as did the regulator. We have had wifi in planes for a while, and they travel a little faster and higher than trains. Will the travelling public use the wifi, what with 4G and 3G so much more commonplace than back in 2007?

I should also say that I am still impressed that I can connect to the internet whilst travelling at over a hundred miles per hour.

April 1, 2013January 1, 2020

Haven no wifi

On a recent short break at Haven Holidays’ Primrose Valley I was impressed that there was wifi across the site, including the entertainment complex and encouragingly in the caravans across the site.

Alas it wasn’t free.

Well you could have 15 minutes for free each day, and then you could pay for more if you needed.

Well 15 minutes is okay to quickly check e-mail or the Twitter, but nowhere near enough to stream an episode of Doctor Who or similar on BBC iPlayer.

I did check prices, and thought £15 for four days, wasn’t too bad. Before I parted with my money though I wanted to check how fast it was. So I signed up for my free 15 minutes and was very disappointed, very slow and much slower than my 3G connection was. It was about 1Mb down and a lot less up. I was mainly interested in using the wifi to upload photographs to Flickr.

So I decided not to use the free wifi and stick with 3G.

Towards the end of the break I “accidently” connected to the free wifi and this time was quite pleased with the speed of the connection. It was much faster than before. I wonder if the poor connection I initially had was either down to lots of other guests trying out and using the free wifi (probably unlikely) or the awful weather, cold, wind, snow we were having at the time?

In the end I think if I had my latter experience to begin with I would have paid the £15.

March 23, 2013

Lack of connectivity

I know I shouldn’t be, but I am consistently and constantly surprised by the lack of connectivity that I see and find on a daily basis.

At the time of writing here in Weston super Mare I have no signal with Vodafone and just GPRS with O2.

There is a BT Wifi Hotspot, but at £5.99 for an hour I think not.

The lack of conduction means that I can’t access Google Docs to write this, also means Evernote isn’t an option. So I am using Pages, but not using iCloud, so will need to transfer the file later or when I do have connectivity do a cut and paste.

Without a decent connection I am loathe to try and deal with email. Too many people send big emails with attachments, or links which I can’t deal with on a slow connection.

Of course I could turn off the phone, but them I wouldn’t be able to write.

I could read a book, well if I had remembered to bring a physical book with me then I could have read that. I did try and read a book I had purchased from the Google Play Store, alas I hadn’t downloaded it to this device and I can say similar things about iBooks and the Kindle app.

It would have been sensible to download stuff in advance. The trouble is that unless you know already, how poor the connection is, you will be otherwise stuck.

March 13, 2013

Flaky WiFi

Back in October I talked about the wifi on CrossCountry Trains.

In the end I went with an £18 for 30 hours deal which I have been using since then.

I finally finished my 30 hours and it was time to renew. However at this time I have decided not to renew.

My main reason was that the last couple of hours was rather flaky and I often had dropped connections. With that kind of connectivity then I might as well rely on 3G and not pay any extra money.