Why the Wi-Fi connection almost never works on trains in Europe. Which country is given as a positive example

European railway companies often promote connectivity in trains as an advantage, but for many passengers, this remains an exercise in patience than one of productivity, writes Politico.

“The performance and quality of the Wi-Fi on board European trains is very weak,” said Luke Kehoe, industrial analyst at the Ookla connectivity information company.

The high train speed causes the Wi-Fi antennas in the wagon or personal phone to have difficulty in maintaining a stable connection between the constantly changing mobile towers.

“If a train runs with 200 km/h, the device could cross a cell every 45 or 60 seconds, which is a quick change,” Kehoe said. “This introduces a technical challenge called the Doppler effect.”

This effect occurs when the rapid movement changes the frequency of the signal, as in the case of a siren that changes its tone, and can affect the ability to maintain a stable connection.

In French trains SNCF, travelers connecting to Wi-Fi receive a warning message: “Due to the lack of coverage and our speed, the quality of the Wi-Fi may differ from home.” It is also recommended not to watch videos online, because it “contributes to limiting the band width”.

But the weak wi-fi in trains is not just speed or number of towers. Many cabins are not designed to allow radio frequencies. “Many trains have used windows with metallic layers or low emissary windows in the past, which are not conducive to the propagation of the signal,” said Kehoe.

This configuration would cause the cab to resemble a Faraday cage, an electromagnetic armor that blocks the wireless signals, similar to what makes the phone lose the signal in the elevator.

Last year, the Belgian Railway Company SNCB gave up the Wi-Fi installation on its trains due to “high implementation costs and covering by telecommunications operators,” said spokesman Tom Guillaume.

Instead, SNCB has decided to pass the responsibility of telecommunications companies, in investing in windows that are more favorable to mobile signals. “Therefore, telecommunications operators must improve the quality of the signal and cover in the vicinity of the railway infrastructure,” said Guillaume.

Where are the best conditions

The physics of radio frequencies is also well known: the tape usually reserved for 5G in Europe is not very effective in crossing trees and leaves, which often border railway lines. This makes it more difficult to connect to the cabins or phone users, as opposed to 4G, where the low tape frequencies commonly used cannot transport as much data, but propagate and manage obstacles better.

“In our data we observe every summer a significant degradation of the performance of the mobile network in dense vegetation areas,” Kehoe added.

If we add thousands of tunnels from the continental network, it is clear that European trains have a difficult task in providing a stable Wi-Fi, although some countries manage to manage this problem better than others.

Switzerland is far in the forehead, with Wi-Fi speeds on board almost 30 times faster than in Austria and the Netherlands. It was the only country in the Ookla sample that exceeded the average threshold of 25 megabites per second for the discharge speed, the minimum limit for a reliable use of the Internet. At the opposite pole, the Netherlands and Spain are site.

Investments for the future

Some railway operators are now heading to the sky, on their own, to obtain a better internet connection, using satellite service providers to cover the coverage gaps along the railway routes.

The Czech railways experience Elon Musk's Starlink network, while SNCF in France is interested in both the American constellation and the Franco-British rival, Eutelsat.

Although satellite connectivity works well for airlines, due to the clear sky and proximity to orbit, this is not an “infallible solution,” said Kehoe, but rather a supplement to the general connectivity mix.

“The emphasis is placed so much on the transmission of the signal to the train, that it has forgotten about transmitting the signal around the train,” he said.

The Wi-Fi equipment and the standards underlying them play an important role in the real quality.

The connections tested by Ookla in Poland, which are near the last place in terms of performance, have shown that trains are still working with Wi-Fi 4, a 2009 standard that offers a much lower band width and much lower gears than newer generations.