T-Mobile has signed an agreement with German railway company Deutsche Bahn to develop and provide WLAN Internet access on high-speed trains. The project will go into a pilot phase on select ICE trains on the busy Cologne-Dortmund track in western Germany this fall and is expected to be gradually expanded to other routes in 2006.
The project faces numerous technical challenges due to Germany’s often rugged and mountainous terrain and the many tunnels along some of the country’s busiest railroad routes. T-Mobile, working with T-Systems, Intel and Cisco, will use Wi-Fi on the trains themselves, UMTS for access and repeaters in tunnels.
As part of the agreement with Deutsche Bahn, T-Mobile will also turn 20 of Germany’s biggest train stations into Hotspots by this summer.
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