Last week I was helping my parents to move from Flekkefjord to Oslo. My father landed on Gardemoen on Wednesday eve, and we traveled down to Flekkefjord with train the following morning. I had planned to work a little bit on the train over a mobile connection. Something that seemed to be more or less impossible.

First of all, the USB dongle seemed to loose connection as soon as you more or less moved. I had to reconnect several times, and some times that wasn’t enough, the software (Mobile Connect) needed to be restarted. I even experienced the software to crash and then not willing to start again, until the machine was restarted. Just as big a problem was the quality of the connection. Soon after Oslo, HSDPA was reduced to UMTS, and after Kongsberg to Edge. Long distances was as low as GPRS.

In the evening I was sitting with my laptop in the kitchen home in Flekkefjord, trying to answer some mails from colleagues at work. I was surprised, Netcom’s net in Flekkefjord was already upgraded to HSDPA. It was rock solid and a great alternative to traditional broadband at home. The following morning we started early driving to back to Oslo with car. The mobile experience was far better then on the train. As a passenger in a car, I had far better mobile connection and was able to work.

I don’t find this acceptable, why should business travelers consider train as a way of traveling? Shouldn’t train have been the perfect place to work? I used to pay extra for an office seat on the trains, to get power for my laptop and to get free access to newspapers. But isn’t what people that upgrade to office seat really want, Internet connection to be able to write e-mails and access corporate databases? Well, I have had my last travel to Flekkefjord, I guess …