I am sitting in a train travelling to the North West of England and using the at seat wifi connection. This service is provided by T-Mobile, a brand with a global presence an major UK mobile operator. “So what?” I hear you say, the problem is that the internet connection from the train surfaces in Germany – and hence I get Google Deutschland, LinkedIn and Facebook with German Language content, all of which I can cope with – but what drives me nuts is that I for some sites content is blocked that is not relevant to the ISP location and that is not my location…
Posted by: Peter Scott | March 19, 2010
Is location aware internet content a good idea?
Posted in Random
you get swedish if you’re on the east coast mainline
not found the location-based blocking though, just a very confusing google homepage.
By: rnm1978 on March 19, 2010
at 3:56 pm
The BBC does sometimes on media streams… but watching streamed news on wifi on the train is a silly thing to want to do.
By: Peter Scott on March 19, 2010
at 4:01 pm
Yep, Known Issue.
East Coast seem to go via some “Nordic Sattelite” (latency
!), and some hotels use iBahn which seems to be Austrian or German.
Hey, I live in Belgum, and have to catch BBC items on TV (we only have BBC1 here – so not topgear), or forget about them. No viewing of UK content here either. grrrr.
By: pdv on March 19, 2010
at 8:22 pm
When I used to work for *that* Dutch company our office internet surfaced in England, Italy or Massachusetts , USA… a quick access of Google,com told me where I was
By: Peter Scott on March 20, 2010
at 12:01 pm