Sure, this has been tried on planes before, but it never really took off, leading Boeing to close down its service. Thalys is giving away its service to first-class passengers, and charging those in second class ¬6.50 (US$10) an hour, about the same price as Wi-Fi hotspots in Paris cafés.

The logistics of delivering Internet access to a train speeding along at 300 kilometers per hour are somewhat different compared to wiring up a bar or hotel foyer.

ThalysNet connects via the satellite Hispasat, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. The satellite dish, protected by a plastic dome on the train's roof, swivels back and forth to follow the satellite as the railway track twists and turns. In some tunnels, and on the outskirts of cities where buildings block the line of sight to the satellite, the system connects instead to local 3G (third-generation) mobile networks. Finally, in stations, when the train is stopped, it relays the signal of Wi-Fi hotspots on the station platform. The handover from one technology to another is automatic.

This impressively complex combination of three technologies should allow passengers to share an Internet connection with an apparent bandwidth of up to 4M bits per second, using it for surfing, sending e-mail, even making voice-over-IP calls, according to the consortium of companies operating the service for Thalys.

I say "should" because when I tried the service this week on its inaugural voyage, accompanied by many of the people who had designed and built it, I was unable even to connect to the on-board portal to enter my password.

I was happy to stretch out and drink another cup of coffee as my laptop scanned the airwaves for the Wi-Fi hotspot, but the chief engineer for the consortium began to look discomfited. Even though one or two travelers in our carriage had managed to connect to their Gmail accounts, something was clearly amiss.

Technicians scuttled in and out of our carriage, and the chief engineer huddled in conference with colleagues, listening distractedly on his mobile phone to the Network Operations Center's assurances that yes, the satellite connection was working just fine.

The problem, it turned out, was with one of the less-expensive components locked away in the little cupboard just behind us: the DHCP server. For some reason, it had stopped dishing out IP addresses a few minutes after departure, so only a lucky few were surfing the 'Net as we whizzed across the Belgian countryside.