Thoughts of a dissatisfied mobile service user

Looking at the ads of service providers, you might think we are already living in something close to communication paradise, where mobile services are available anytime, anywhere. Well, today’s reality is different.

Connectivity on the train
I am writing this in a train and, for the fourth time in as many train trips, the much advertised WLAN connectivity in the train doesn’t work. I can connect to the network in the train and get an IP address, but the server does not respond. It is impossible for me to log in and then get out to the rest of the Internet. This is not a good example of German engineering from Deutsche Bahn and T-Mobile. The nice lady from Deutsche Bahn has just explained that they have tried a hard reset on the T-Mobile device, and it did not fix it, so they have to call out the T-Mobile technician. However, he is hardly likely to catch up with us, as we are going north at about 250 km/h right now. 

This is frustrating because I had planned to catch up with the many unanswered e-mails in my inbox during this train trip. Now I am annoyed, as I can’t do the work planned and must find time later in the day to do this. 

Back-up option
Not to worry – I have the back-up option of using the modem in my computer and connecting via GPRS, but here I have two different problems. My first problem is that I have two SIM cards: one for data within Germany and another for outside Germany, because the data roaming prices are so confusing. But now I am not sure, which one is in the computer. If I use the wrong one in the wrong context, it costs an absolute fortune to read a few e-mails. 

The second problem is that the train keeps going through tunnels which interrupt the connection, causing many of the programmes in my computer go into a sort of suspended animation mode where they have lost contact with the server. They keep trying to regain contact, like good little soldiers, but they don’t understand that the battle is lost. By the time the train comes out into the open and the connection is reestablished and all the programmes have found their servers again, the train either enters another tunnel or the network has changed from GPRS to HSDPA, and the reconnection story begins all over again. 

Lessons to be learned
So the question is: have we really solved mobile data communications? If we cannot depend on the connectivity in a train, where the route and speed are known in advance, can we consider our technology effective and reliable? 

There are probably many of you reading this now who can refute my experience and tell me it works. But I don’t care! It is not working for me now when I need it, and my experience is that I have the same problems on the Thalys to Brussels as on the ICE to Cologne. 

What can we learn from this? Well, simply that the theory is often a lot better than the practice and that we need to make sure the practice keeps up to date. 

I don’t know what caused the WLAN not to work in the train today and the other days I have travelled, but the frequency of its failure makes me feel slightly stupid for having depended on it. I should have known better. 

And here is the heart of the problem: if we cannot rely on the services of today because the Deutsche Bahn lady cannot fix the T-Mobile box, we must understand that future systems must have much more robust services. 

Providers must be able to contact their box and make it work without the customers on the train ever having realized there was a problem. The future could come sooner than we think, if we can just make the technology we already have work effectively.

As the great engineer Bob the Builder says: Can we fix it?