Marek is going undersea, underground; is amazed at how everyone's phones do GSM cell handoffs every 12 seconds-ish while on the Eurostar/TGV.

The French have strong national pride in their railways, despite the strikes, and I feel that I experienced an expression of that pride during my journey to Morzine. SNCF runs almost all the trains in France and is a public sector organisation. SNCF operates the world’s fastest train. The only such superlative I can think of in the British public sector would be along the lines of world’s most inconsistent public health system.

A comment about engineering: building a railway such as that used by the TGV is a huge undertaking in a country the size of France. The French transport networks strike me as massive socialist projects (but permitting private endeavours such as the autoroutes). The earthworks to lay some track for a TGV line are impressive, and as I sit here on the train with flat countryside stretching out to the horizon I can only imagine what it must be like to work on such an undertaking. Even with mechanisation it must be a huge amount of effort to lay each segment, and the land stretches out further than the eye can see. How slowly each week must take to pass.

A political comment: it will be most interesting to see how the Obama administration’s recovery plan will transform America. It amuses me slightly that such a left-wing approach to stimulating the economy and reducing unemployment has come about, especially given the frigidity of Franco-American relations after the invasion of Iraq.

Finally something about technology: TGV moves at around 200 miles per hour. GSM cell sites have an effective range of some tens of miles. To keep my mobile phone registered to the mobile networks — let alone continue a conversation in progress — I found my Nokia N95 would change GSM cell every twelve to fifteen seconds. While looking at the on-screen graph from PyNetMony I realised that exactly the same process would be happening for each of the several hundred passengers’ mobile phones on the same train. The mobile phone network is moving each caller’s voice at around 200 miles an hour heading northwards, with tens of database transactions in the carrier’s home location registers every second just for this one train. Using GSM telephones as an example of engineering feats, clearly capitalism can get some things right too.