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Clint Swett

September 15, 2003

Sep. 15--LIVERMORE, Calif.--With the dawn creeping over the Altamont Pass, Brett Brimhall sat on a commuter train to San Jose, flipped open his laptop, logged onto the Internet and made sure his paycheck had been deposited into his bank account.

"It's payday, and I had some bills scheduled for early payment," said Brimhall, an engineer for chip maker Maxim Integrated Products in San Jose.

Brimhall was among 30 or so riders surfing the Web and checking their e-mail Thursday morning thanks to a new wireless Internet service launched last week on the No. 3 Altamont Commuter Express, or ACE train, between Stockton and San Jose.

Later this month, riders on the Capitol Corridor trains between Sacramento and the Bay Area are set to get their own wireless, or Wi-Fi, Internet link.

PointShot Wireless, based in Ottawa, Canada, runs the ACE Wi-Fi system. It soon will install similar gear on two Capitol Corridor trains, giving riders a chance to be more productive -- or at least entertained -- on the trip. Both Wi-Fi systems are being rolled out on a trial basis.

If the tests prove successful, Wi-Fi could become a standard amenity for rail travelers, particularly those who ride heavily traveled routes.

"A substantial portion of our passengers use the train for work trips." said Eugene Skoropowski, managing director of the Capitol Corridor Joint Powers Authority, which operates the Sacramento-Bay Area train service. "We were getting requests for this from our riders."

The Capitol Corridor would be the third line to use the PointShot system in North America, after a route between Toronto and Montreal and the ACE line, which links Stockton with the Silicon Valley.

The two Northern California railroads were picked as test markets because their relative small size allows them to act more quickly than a giant carrier like Amtrak, said Shawn Griffin, PointShot's president and chief executive officer.

Also critical was the lines' high proportion of tech-savvy riders who want to stay connected onboard.

"ACE is small and nimble, and while the Capitol Corridor is bigger, it knows Wi-Fi is something its customers are interested in," he said."

Analysts say such systems could be quite popular with train riders and inexpensive for the railroads.

"If you are able to work effectively on the train, you can be productive for the whole four hours (of a round trip)," said Martin Reynolds, who follows the wireless industry for the Gartner Group.

"If you spend that time driving, you can't do anything."

Wi-Fi, short for wireless fidelity, is becoming increasingly commonplace in hotels, airports and cafés around the nation.

Typically, a hotel or café will broadcast over radio waves an Internet connection that is then picked up by wireless transmitters installed in laptop computers and other devices. But making Wi-Fi work on a moving train is another matter, Griffin said.

To allow passengers to go online, a commercial satellite orbiting about 22,000 miles above the Earth beams an Internet connection to an antenna mounted in an 18-inch-high dome on the train car.

The signal is sent to a server installed in the ceiling of the car, which broadcasts the Internet connection to commuters' wireless laptops.

When a passenger sends an e-mail or requests a Web page, the data is beamed back to the server, where it is relayed to cellular towers along the train's route.

From the towers, the information flows into the wired phone network, which routes it to PointShot's remote servers.

While Griffin said Internet performance ranges from fast dial-up to DSL speeds, it appeared to be hovering more in the dial-up range last week. That frustrated power-users like Brimhall and Chico Fernandez, a computer specialist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator in Palo Alto.

Both said the the system didn't appear to have enough juice to connect effectively to their employers' virtual private networks, or VPNs, a secure link that lets employees tap into their firm's e-mail systems and perform other tasks within corporate computer networks.

"Browsing the Web is fine, but getting my e-mail through VPN is slow," said Fernandez. "It would be nice if it were faster so I could leave work early some days and telecommute from the train. But right now, if I wanted to do any real work on the train, I couldn't."

Despite being able to cruise the Web and check his bank account, Brimhall also pronounced himself disappointed.

"It's better than nothing," he said. "But I don't think I'd want to pay for it."

That could be a critical issue for PointShot.

While at least one month of the trial period on the Capitol Corridor will be free, the company plans to charge a still-to-determined fee for using the system -- like T-Mobile charges for using its Wi-Fi network in Starbucks' cafés.

Griffin said PointShot is working with VPN software companies to improve performance and said he's confident any problems will be resolved.

"Some VPNs are fine; others are more finicky," he said. "That's part of the reason we're doing the trials -- to get real-world experience."

Despite its head start, PointShot won't have the Capitol Corridor Wi-Fi market to itself. The rail line is negotiating with two other companies to install Wi-Fi gear on its trains, probably before the end of the year.

Each of the three companies will get to test its service on two train sets consisting of one engine and five cars. Typically, one car on each train set would be Wi-Fi equipped, though riders in adjoining cars also might receive signals.

At the end of the test period, scheduled to last six to 12 months, Capitol Corridor's Skoropowski said the train line will evaluate the performance of each system and review competing proposals before awarding a contract.

He declined to name the other two companies vying for the contract.

Skoropowski said he expected Wi-Fi would further boost ridership on the Capitol Corridor, which has grown for 12 straight months and now boasts more than 100,000 passengers a month.

"We're making an effort to be as customer-focused as possible," he said, noting that the railroad recently put breakfast burritos back on the morning menu and began stocking a popular ale in its bar car because of customer demand.

"If they want it," he said, "that's what we'll do."

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To see more of The Sacramento Bee, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.sacbee.com

(c) 2003, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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