October 15th, 2007

Amtrak and T-Mobile offer WiFi at select stations, Sounder trains have free WiFi

Posted by Matthew Miller @ 1:47 pm

Categories: On the road, Wireless carriers, mobile services

Tags: Train, T-Mobile, Amtrak, Sound Transit, Wireless LANs, Wi-Fi, Wireless, Matthew Miller

Amanda sent me a press release from T-Mobile today announcing that T-Mobile HotSpot service is available in five major Amtrak stations on the East Coast. Passengers who are waiting for their train can now surf via the T-Mobile WiFi network at the Washington D,C, Union Station, Baltimore Penn Station, Wilmington Station, Philadelphia 30th Street Station and New York Penn Station. If you have T-Mobile cellular service with the US$19.99 monthly unlimited data plan you can surf for free as part of that plan too. With a device like the new BlackBerry 8320, that I am evaluating right now, you can also make and receive UMA calls at these stations. At first I thought the press release was going to tell me you could surf via WiFi on the trains, which I just happened to discover does work here in Seattle.

I fired up my iPhone today for some email checking and surfing on the Sounder train on my way to work when up popped a WiFi hotspot labeled with the Sounder name. I quickly connected and found I had a strong signal that was completely open. I did some searching around on the Sound Transit site after receiving the T-Mobile/Amtrak press release and discovered in the latest Fall 2007 edition of RIDE (pdf document). Sounder rail cars with series numbers 100, 300, and 400 have free WiFi service to and from Everett-Seattle and Tacoma-Seattle. WiFi is also available on 34 Sound Transit Express buses. An icon on the bus should alert you to availability. Sound Transit asks that you not stream audio or video content since the connection is shared by all riders. This availability just made my commute that much better and more productive and I definitely will be looking for these specific train cars.