EE WiFi on Richardson's Boats

[LondonRascal]

I thought this promo video from EE might be of interest to the many hirers with Richardson’s as they have begun to equip their fleet with onboard ‘public wifi’ through EE.

No more dongles and cables to worry about it will all be ‘built in’ to each boat and running away in the background, I wonder if Richardson’s will recoup some of the money invested in the scheme with data charging but clearly EE had the best services in a single package to go with and having looked into this on EE’s website would appear to be a scalable solution from the small coffee shop to caravan parks, larger businesses or even boats. 

Despite the fact in the video talk is made of an EE engineer going about testing signals and all being just right - I’ll personally stick with my trusty Three network. Having been on the Broads with an EE powered 4G unit it worked very well in the odd place, but would always be lagging behind Three – if Three had HSDPA speeds, EE could only muster 3G and where Three had 3G, EE would show a full signal but provide on GPRS speeds but I doubt such a solutions to EE’s for a company exists. 

The fact is this further goes to show what people require these days.  Having access to the Web is more than just about checking emails etc, as is said in the video about checking routes, or looking up reviews on where to eat and the like - it its very much being expected to be available these days both ashore and afloat.

 

 

 

 

 

[BroadScot]

Hi Robin,

I do believe that BT are trying to buy EE? If so, would that not supply a lot more hot spots for wifi?

Iain.

[Poppy]

'EE' stands for 'Everything Everywhere' - apparently.  Don't get your hopes up. My experience is NN - Nothing Nowhere  - especially on The Broads

[FairTmiddlin]

Around where I live they used to call one2one

One2None

[JawsOrca]

Be interesting to hear the reviews of connectivity.. I always thought three had a better signal than everyone else. I guess though this is costing richos a lot of money so there must be a good signal if not then perhaps there is a movement to increase it (Who was it that was talking about putting a mast at horning?).. As always though one reason I like the broads is the lack of signal so I can't pick up my phone or laptop.. in some selfish way I hope that never changes.

[ChrisB]

Full 4G now at Broadsedge on Vodafone. That has only happened recently. Still a complete black hole up here on the coast though.

[Poppy]

13 minutes ago, ChrisB said:

Full 4G now at Broadsedge on Vodafone. That has only happened recently. Still a complete black hole up here on the coast though.

Second homers stopped the Blakeney mast recently.  What chance for a mast in Horning? None, anybody?

[JawsOrca]

10 minutes ago, Poppy said:

Second homers stopped the Blakeney mast recently.  What chance for a mast in Horning? None, anybody?

Good!

[BryanW]

This last summer I had a Vodafone signal good enough for phone and limited internet access (only really used for weather forecasts) over all the Northern Broads but my wife on BT (which I believe uses the EE network) couldn't even get a phone signal most places.  Things may now have changed on EE but I hope Richardson's customers do not get disappointed.  Peronally as long as I have a phone signal (for emergencies) then I am more than happy.

[ChrisB]

Vodaphone actually is not bad in Blakeney as they have boosters under their "sure rural scheme" I think it is only 3G though. 

I also think that the second home owner bit can be a little overstated as there are very few of them with either the time or inclination to be on the parish council of their village. Now Incomers (of which I admit I am one) can be a different kettle of piscatorial all together.

[JennyMorgan]

Interesting article:

http://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/technology/2015/11/connected-save-time-money-and-lives

Does this mean that Richardsons will know where you are and how fast you are travelling? 

[JawsOrca]

Technically anything is posible Peter.. but then again they could have GPS trackers which can be referred to afterwards. not sure why they would want to though. From our experiances last year the rangers can pretty much find a boat in a very short amount of time and keep a close eye on them! So I doubt there's a need to.

But I guess perhaps later down the line you could connect them up to things like battery monitors and view the state of things when they are out, so if there's a problem then they can look before attending.. or fixing before problems occur.. Be interesting to hear if Clive and co have such future ideas like this.

[JennyMorgan]

Call-out location, for one thing, would be a real plus. The possibility of monitoring battery state, fuel levels and the like from boat to yard, amazing stuff!  Big brother but for all the right reasons. 

[LondonRascal]

Once you’ve got a ‘connected boat’ then a great deal is possible.  The thing is we really are in so many ways galloping a long at a ferocious pace as far as what is now possible with technology but that is not being exploited enough.

The sort of developments that could be handy to a hire fleet operator (or indeed the private owner) would be having a panel on the boat that was a multifunction screen which takes inputs from things like waste and water tank gauges then battery monitoring and temperature of the hot water etc – if they could be ‘sent’ to a display on the boat, it is a small step to having them then talk to the Web. 

Anything like this however is always over sold as some amazing super rich feature that bungs on a great price increase and has to have the word ‘smart’ tagged on to it – much as ‘smart thermostats’ that just look fancy and allow you to turn the heating up a degree or two from an App as you travel home.

Naturally, through EE Richardson’s is going to be able to restrict what people can do on their devices which is a good safety feature for families who may be used to such controls at home. It does also open up for rather detailed reports of what customers do on their holiday – what websites are visited, for how long, and from what locations – knowing who hired a boat at the time would give demographic information from age, gender and where they have come from to Norfolk and all this data can then be used in future advertising campaigns targeted at specific sets of people.

By having GPS too then you really open up a whole host of options with targeted location specific offers and promotions – Android tablets can be got a silly cheap prices these days and it would not be beyond the realms of fantasy that a boat would have one built in to the dash and with a proprietary App provide things like mapping and speed but also ‘live chat’ with an engineer if you have a fault, local offers – you get the idea.