Passengers travelling on the Heathrow Express between Heathrow Airport and London’s Paddington station can make use of new wireless internet connections from today.

T-Mobile and Nomad Networks have teamed up to provide Wi-Fi access within the carriages during the 15 minute journey. “In essence it’s a hotspot, but employed on the Heathrow Express. You open your laptop, fire it up, and choose how long you need access for and pay”, said T-Mobile spokesman Richard Walmsley. “The tariffs are £5 for one hour, £10 for 24 hours and £40 for 30 days [all inclusive of VAT]. You can pay by SMS or choose to charge to your T-Mobile corporate account”, he added. Customers can continue using the service after they leave the train through other T-Mobile HotSpots at Heathrow Airport or in Central London locations such as Starbucks cafés and Borders bookshops.

The network infrastructure is provided by Nomad Networks, which is employing Cisco access points in the trains to provide the 802.11b/g wireless connections, normally at speeds in excess of 2Mbit/s. Nomad chairman and co-founder Nigel Wallbridge said, “The connection is handed off to 3G base stations placed trackside and a 5.4GHz (band B) WiMax 802.16d connection takes care of internet access in the 6km tunnel part of the journey.”