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Old 03-05-2008, 08:44 PM
lblow
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Default Airtel service should work in Maglev Trains

I hope you're right, that Maglev trains will be the "in thing" in the near future. One is already in commercial operation in Shanghai, China, you may know. But I wish to add a couple of comments:
[LIST][*]Maglevs are indeed very fast, 'cause they will not be touching the track, as you say, but their clearances above the track are on the order of 10-15 centimeters, not millimeters. This is distinguished from the air gaps between levitation and guidance magnets, which in the case of Transrapid can be on the order of 10 mm or so.
[*]Secondly, service providers should be able to provide Internet service inside the train. Mobile-phone service has been tried out successfully in the Transrapid test facility in Emsland, Germany and is planned for future Transrapid projects around the world. There is no "strong magnetic field" within the train to overcome, in any case, but the raw travel speed presented problems initially, transferring from cell to cell, so in Germany the fix was to carry the mobile phone signals over an existing channel for communications between the vehicle and control center. I expect similar fixes can enable Internet service as well in future construction projects.[/LIST]
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