Wireless at its productive, convenient best!

Heathrow is officially the busiest airport in the world today. As I was made to calculate in a recent interview with a top Strategy Consulting firm, the capacity of the airport in terms of number of passengers flying out per year is nearly 55 million! 5-5 M-I-L-L-I-O-N!!!

To put that into perspective, the population of the UK is a shade above 60 million. Pretty astounding. With a significant portion of these being business travellers, someone calculated the number of man-hours spent each year in commuting to the airport. Imagine the lost productivity. Its a problem...and an opportunity as well!

Picking up on this, T-Mobile has announced an ingenious undertaking by deploying Wi-Fi hotspots along the Heathrow Express. From a technology standpoint, this also includes a first in terms of wireless access through the WiMax technology on the underground train service.

I dont know what the productivity increase will be. Frankly, I dont care. I just enjoyed the thought of someone using technology to come up with a creative solution to a known pain point. Interesting, inspirational stuff...