Veolia Transport and Orange Business Services are launching a pilot for a ‘groundbreaking’ Wifi portal, which will be the first of its kind in France, on three coaches from the express line fleet between Mantes-La-Jolie and La Défense. Travelers with a Wifi-enabled mobile terminal (laptop, telephone/smartphone) will now be able to access an information and entertainment portal throughout their journey.
Orange Business Services is in charge of supervision aspects for the portal, including advice, support, design, content aggregation and maintenance.
Thanks to this portal, travelers equipped with WiFi equipment will now be able to surf for the 45 to 60 minutes of their journey, looking up transport information, local information on the areas covered by the line, and even entertainment.
Now from the information I have, which isn’t much, sounds like the plan is to create a walled-garden – which suddenly takes me from thinking this was an awesome idea, to one that is far less than awesome. To have WiFi (or any wireless access) when you are being driven somewhere (note: not driving yourself!) can be handy to fill in the time, but to be limited in what you can access? No thank you, I’d rather have EDGE coverage!
If anything further comes along in detail I’ll update the post, but the general concept of wideband mobile access whilst moving is a good one!
Veolia Transport and Orange Business Services are launching a pilot for a ‘groundbreaking’ Wifi portal, which will be the first of its kind in France, on three coaches from the express line fleet between Mantes-La-Jolie and La Défense. Travelers with a Wifi-enabled mobile terminal (laptop, telephone/smartphone) will now be able to access an information and entertainment portal throughout their journey.Orange Business Services is in charge of supervision aspects for the portal, including advice, support, design, content aggregation and maintenance. Thanks to this portal, travelers equipped with WiFi equipment will now be able to surf for the 45 to 60 minutes of their journey, looking up transport information, local information on the areas covered by the line, and even entertainment.
Now from the information I have, which isn’t much, sounds like the plan is to create a walled-garden – which suddenly takes me from thinking this was an awesome idea, to one that is far less than awesome. To have WiFi (or any wireless access) when you are being driven somewhere (note: not driving yourself!) can be handy to fill in the time, but to be limited in what you can access? No thank you, I’d rather have EDGE coverage!
If anything further comes along in detail I’ll update the post, but the general concept of wideband mobile access whilst moving is a good one!