Deutsche Bahn and T-Mobile extend their traveling WiFi HotSpot service at the ICE train routes. Now, also the route Frankfurt am Main – Hanover – Hamburg is covered with WiFi internet access (“railnet”). Overall, we have WiFi internet connection within the train on most of the ICE routes in Germany:

• Dortmund – Düsseldorf – Cologne (also via Hagen and Wuppertal)
• Cologne – Frankfurt am Main Airport
• Frankfurt am Main – Stuttgart – Munich
• Frankfurt am Main – Hanover – Hamburg

The service offers laptop and especially iPhone users an internet connection even if the train travels at a maximum speed of 300 km/h – more than 180 miles per hour! Im always impressed about the quite stable and fast internet connection even when traveling that fast. And the best thing of all: as a (German T-Mobile) iPhone user you don’t even have to pay for the WiFi connection in the train!

Source/picture: Deutsche Bahn

The German mobile service "Call a Bike" shows, that mobile services do not only need to be virtual. This year the mobile phone based bike-sharing service is rolled out in Stuttgart, the city you probably know as the home of DaimlerChrysler.
The system is quite simple to use: At all major crossings within the city users can rent a bike with a mobile phone call – and return it. The user receives a code via SMS to his or her mobile phone and is able to open the electronic lock of the bike. Returning the bike is as easy as renting it: Just leave it at a major crossing and check out with another phone call and the deactivation code of the electronic lock. The registered user is charged by minute. Mehr …