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With "free" Wifi, you get what you pay for

I know, I should be grateful. I'm on the train, and I have a Wifi link to the Internet.

Years ago, all the railway companies in Europe were wetting themselves over how much money they'd make from providing WiFi Internet on trains. I remember doing a test of the first to go live - GNER's service. It was a comical disaster, but it did get going, eventually.

And today, I'm on the train...

I have an internet connection. Speed is not its main point: according to ThinkBroadband, the average download rate is 51.17 Kbps and average up is faster! - 64.44 Kbps. So we're running at old-fashioned modem/GPRS speeds.

It's clever, I'll give them full points for that: if the train moves out of coverage for a while, the train's server carries on responding to your PC, fooling it into thinking that there's still a connection. But is this the service we were dreaming of all those years ago?

I'd pay for one of the services on offer: mains electricity to every seat. It's a six hour journey, and I don't have to worry about my laptop battery! - but I've been finding it very, very hard to get any actual online work done.

The problem is that web-based services are often only marginally resilient. Press "send" and if they don't get it, there's always a real risk that when you press the "back" button, they'll present you with an empty form.

Of course, they shouldn't. Of course, it's not NX's fault that these web sites fall short of Internet best practice. But the bottom line is that you find yourself having to do, and re-do things.

The train I'm on is from Edinburgh to London, and with the company Great North Eastern Rail -GNER - defunct and taken over by National Express, the WiFi service here is the heir of that service which so spectacularly didn't work on the initial test.

It's actually quite good. But what it isn't, is making extra revenue: it's completely free and has been since June 2006.

When I boarded the train and found that it was still free, I thought that was odd. As a friend put it: "I'd kill for any kind of WiFi Internet on a train!" - and those were my thoughts, too. And if you want a summary of NX's connection, I'd have to say I'm pleased to have it. It's definitely better than nothing, and rather better than my HSDPA dongle, too, in terms of coverage.

But the truth is, if I were being charged for this service, I'd be aggrieved, because they still haven't found a way to get enough bandwidth into the train itself. And there are pages you can read with a slow connection, but sadly, there are a lot more where you go nuts with frustration.

So on the side of the coach, the sign "WiFi available, free" is attractive; and the service is, definitely, worth having.

But I can see why it's free...