Fleetconnect (On board wifi)

mk6705

Does anyone find on-board wifi, in the vast majority of cases provided by Fleetconnect, to be horribly unreliable? Being slow is somewhat acceptable but I tend to notice that it doesn't work more often than not. This is used by Irish Rail, Bus Eireann and many private operators. And it's not so much a question of location. It is, to be fair, a lot more reliable on trains than any other mode of transport I've noticed but I've found that it tends to be very unreliable on buses ie. not working for most of the journey on long distance journeys and I'm yet to find a city bus in Cork with working wifi despite trying it a few times (Even late in the evening with only a few on board). Anyone else notice this?

Jehuty42

Well the backend is essentially just the phone network, shared between everyone on the bus/train, so it's never going to come even close to wifi in a fixed location. The latency is the biggest problem.

I don't know how it compares to service in other countries, I don't imagine it's too different.

mk6705

Jehuty42 wrote: »

Well the backend is essentially just the phone network, shared between everyone on the bus/train, so it's never going to come even close to wifi in a fixed location. The latency is the biggest problem.

I don't know how it compares to service in other countries, I don't imagine it's too different.

I don't expect that, but it seems to not work at all in a lot of cases, even with low loads of people in areas with 3G coverage from multiple operators.

dowlingm

Does Fleetconnect impose restrictions like no youtube etc.? VIA Rail's provider does, so inline videos have a block of text saying "we don't allow you to view videos" or something similar.

foggy_lad

Adro947 wrote: »

Does anyone find on-board wifi, in the vast majority of cases provided by Fleetconnect, to be horribly unreliable? Being slow is somewhat acceptable but I tend to notice that it doesn't work more often than not. This is used by Irish Rail, Bus Eireann and many private operators. And it's not so much a question of location. It is, to be fair, a lot more reliable on trains than any other mode of transport I've noticed but I've found that it tends to be very unreliable on buses ie. not working for most of the journey on long distance journeys and I'm yet to find a city bus in Cork with working wifi despite trying it a few times (Even late in the evening with only a few on board). Anyone else notice this?

The mobile phone networks only cover populated areas of the country so if people are travelling along railway lines or motorways and main roads across miles and miles of farmland and through mountainous and boggy areas there are not many centres of population density so less phone masts and less 3g coverage.

I have found the WiFi poor on the train to cork but on Bus Eireann buses around Dublin and Meath it was very good.

On buses the service is provided by those mobile broadband WiFi dongles and sometimes these can be turned off inadvertently by the driver or even placed in the drivers pocket when they go on a break for security as they would be easily stolen, but then gets forgotten so the signal is very poor for the journey, it will connect but there won't be any service because the dongle is not getting the required mobile signal.

dowlingm

The Channel Tunnel implementation is to use Alcatel gear to handle both GSM-R and ordinary GSM - it would be great if IE's rollout of GSM could similarly facilitate better wireless broadband in areas where the mainline diverges from the motorways.

L1011

Seems to be woefully unreliable on Wexford Bus also.

chewed

I posted a thread on this a few weeks back

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=77192318

I agree that the service is not great on my route. Constantly dropping and unable to log into the service. I've emailed Fleetconnect customer service, but they never reply!