travel

Hey ARN, that access speed was impressive

My travels over time have taught me that the Internet is not omnipresent.

Public Internet assess is often overloaded and can, at times, present a poor user experience for the most basic of tasks, such as checking web mail.

A mobile hot-spot is a great backup and is often reliable. However, a mobile hot-spot can also suffer like public Internet access and present a poor user experience.

A particular example that comes to mind when my mobile hot-spot was unusable on several occasions was at the Atlanta airport (ATL).  There is an enormous amount of people coming and going at this airport.

Atlanta ATL Crownded

Atlanta (ATL) Terminal. Photo Credit: KBurchfiel2

For what it’s worth, the ATL airport is the busiest US airport by total passenger boardings year over year (Government uses the word enplanement 1).

Getting on with what was so impressive about Stockholm’s airport, the best public Internet experience I have had up to now was in the Swedish Stockholm Arlanda Airport (ARN), 100Mbps up/down! Snappy! My flight from Heathrow London arrived ahead of a colleague so I found a spot in the airport to setup and get some work done while I waited. This photo looks like the spot I was at where the person is in the white shirt is sitting on the bottom right side.

Stockholm Arlanda Airport (ARN) terminal. Photo Credit: Svartmetall Sverige3

 

 

  1. Enplanement is defined: Domestic, territorial, and international revenue passengers who board an aircraft in the states in scheduled and non-scheduled service of aircraft in intrastate, interstate, and foreign commerce and includes intransit passengers (passengers on board international flights that transit an airport in the US for non-traffic purposes). Definition source is Bureau of Transportation Statistics dictionary page: https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/dictionary/list.xml?letter=E&page=1 ↩
  2. Found image via Internet search. Apparently sourced from a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVp2DCitKdw ↩
  3. Found image via Internet search. Apparently sourced from a YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbTWmX6lIUo ↩

Closing 2015 Travel

This past year has been the most traveled for me by far.

I’m often asked if I like the travel.  The answer is easy for me, I like the travel and being on the go.  It’s fast-past and demanding.  Not many Transport-Airplane-Takeoff-iconpeople can appreciate the required effort and labor involved with doing business while traveling at the same time.  The key point in closing my answer to the question about liking travel is to point out that I miss my family!  That’s the main negative about traveling for me.  It’s not the travel itself or the demands of travel+business, it’s the lack of family time.

By the way, my wife was great in supporting my travel even though she wished I was home more.

delta-air-lines-logoIn 2015 on Delta Airlines, I flew 162 segments.  Some of these segments were on KLM flights overseas.  I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed flying Delta as opposed to other airlines.

When it comes to hotels I can not stress enough how important it is to get a good nights rest.  It really is “you get what you pay for” out there.  The worst thing I say about hotels is hearing through the walls.  Nothing will keep me awake more at night than hearing someone else and all the racket they are up to.  In my experience, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt hotels have never let me down.

The 2016 travel is looking to be somewhat tempered.  It will be welcome given the tempo of the last 5 years.