Stay connected while traveling in 2025
One of the characters in a 1995 Stephen King novel demonstrates his supernatural connection by giving a cell phone four-bar reception in the middle of the Nevada desert. It’s a clever trick from King – who’s always been good at writing technology into horror rather than working around it – and it’s also possibly the most mid-1990s plot development I can think of without making the character Kurt Cobain in disguise.
Maybe remote Nevada remains a phone service wasteland. (We have a couple of places in western Pennsylvania where most carriers struggle for a minute or two.) But these days, serious stretches without any connection at all have basically vanished, creating more problems for horror or mystery authors but benefiting the rest of us. From temporary passes to public Wi-Fi, there are more ways than ever to stay connected while traveling.
Planes, trains and automobiles: Connectivity on the move
Car phones, technically, date back to 1946!
For those of us who weren’t spies, stockbrokers or my father in 1995, though, mobile connectivity really started around the turn of the millennium, and accessing the internet from a moving vehicle is even more recent than that. Like so many aspects of our lives, it’s kind of amazing how quickly it’s become standard to stay connected on most forms of transportation.
In-flight Wi-Fi, for example: 77% of respondents to a Viasat survey said it was important to them, compared to 55% in 2018. Good Wi-Fi can get 82% of passengers – 92% of business travellers – back to an airline, and 52% are willing to watch ads for free in-flight connectivity. Whether they want to keep in touch with people on the ground, get work done or just stay on top of their mobile games, more and more passengers want to stay connected while they’re in the air.
Airlines, providers and even governments have moved to meet the demand. American Airlines, the last major US carrier to lack free Wi-Fi, will start offering it next year. The EU actually mandates 5G service on flights. Canadian financial app WealthSimple has solicited opinions on a phone plan that would include in-flight service on all the country’s airlines.
But let’s come down to earth. How about trains? In my experience overseas, most countries have decent on-train Wi-Fi … but then again, most countries overseas have semi-reliable, semi-widespread train coverage, which is a nice change from most parts of the US. My home state of Massachusetts is one of the few that actually attempts some kind of train coverage (as long as you don’t want to go west of Springfield), and in all my time riding the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, its theoretical Wi-Fi has worked something like twice. I don’t even try these days: I just use my phone.
Amtrak is a little bit better, especially on highly traveled routes such as the one between New York and Boston. In my experience, though, service often goes in and out and there are stretches where it just isn’t possible to stay connected. Lunatrain is promising high-speed Wi-Fi on their upcoming overnight service, and it’ll be interesting to see whether they can reliably follow through on that.
Buses run into some of the same international divide. The US is bigger than many other countries, with a less centralized government, and often less government funding for both public transit and public internet access. Maintaining a consistent connection on long trips will likely be harder across the board. That said, just about every major bus line in the US offers at least theoretical Wi-Fi connections. The same can be said for most long-haul buses in the UK and many other countries, with South Korea recently adding connectivity to its express buses.
The last element – that is until we figure out a way to travel through fire – is also the most troublesome: the sea. Distance and constant motion make staying connected at sea a major challenge, and most of the existing services are via satellite, which can be costly. The FCC may improve the situation by giving cruise ships unlicensed access to 6 GHz frequencies. Technological innovations could provide other connectivity boosts and WMS has partnered with AT&T for an upcoming solution. Maritime internet has some good prospects on the hook, though we still have to see whether companies or governments can land them.
At a destination
Obviously, it’s generally a little easier to connect once the user and the network can stay in one place. Ease is relative, though: I’d guess the second most frequently asked question in any coffee shop, right after “Where’s the bathroom?” is “Do you have Wi-Fi?” and getting the password is an essential part of any visit to the home of friend or relative that lasts more than a couple hours.
The most common model in public places is the one that Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts and other fast food chains use: To gain access to the store’s network, people first must give the company their email address and maybe some demographic information on a landing page splashed with the brand’s logo and promotions. It can be a handy way to market new offerings, a voluntary method of collecting data in a privacy-centric world and an edge over local or independent cafes that might be more stingy with bandwidth.
Communities themselves have begun offering connectivity. While Mexico City has more Wi-Fi hot spots than any other city – 1,500 – metropolises like Moscow, Hong Kong and Perth, Australia, have set up free public internet access for residents and visitors alike. Some less urban regions of the US use the Smart Towns program to give broadband subscribers public Wi-Fi on their mobile accounts. Even when the region itself doesn’t provide widespread connectivity, libraries, airports and train stations usually do.
Even with all of those possibilities, some places still lack public internet, even when a signal is available. Providers like Cox and Xfinity have capitalized on this niche by offering temporary passes, letting people log onto networks that use the same service. That’s why I may or may not have written some of this article over a club sandwich at the local diner, which has neither public Wi-Fi nor mobile reception.
Normally, without public Wi-Fi, I’d just make my phone into a hot spot. That’s how I stay connected on the MBTA and the more Pennsylvanian stretches of Amtrak, how I cope when the friend I’m staying with is asleep and I don’t know their password and, for a while, it was even how I managed my home internet. It works decently well for everything except maybe the sort of online gaming where you need split-second response times, and I’ve never liked people enough to play those games.
To be honest, I could use my phone for internet for a solid month of work and entertainment without ever running low on data – as long as I stay in the country.
While the last time I remember dealing with out-of-network issues or roaming in the US was a decade or more back, the situation changes once I cross the border. Just using email and browsing the internet runs through my international data in a day or two, making an international plan a good idea.
I’ve also temporarily switched to a local plan for whatever country I was in. The process initially involved standing at a storefront in Heathrow Airport, cross-eyed from jet lag, blinking as the nice guy behind the counter messed around with my phone and tiny electronic cards. Now that most phones have eSIM cards, that’s no longer necessary.
A connected world
Technological advancements and an increasingly mobile population have steadily expanded both the number of places with some form of internet connectivity and the ways to access it, but as I outlined, there is still progress to be made. And yet, these days, being offline for a while is generally a deliberate plan, as we stay in touch with friends or colleagues, look up directions or distract kids with an episode of “Bluey” so they stop asking if we’re there yet. Even when people are technically disconnected, most carriers offer emergency services through satellites.
Hockey-masked slashers and scheming relatives will just have to change their plans accordingly.