The eOK .network

I thought I’d write about my bus trip from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and back over the weekend since there was actually interest expressed on Twitter. What’s most fascinating for the technorati is that this is a high-end luxury coach that provides power sockets for laptops and free WiFi as well as a personal movie/games-on-demand on a swivel 11-inch LCD screen. For readers who are not from Singapore or Malaysia, travelling from Singapore to KL and vise versa is a common occurrence in these parts with the road trip lasting between 4 to 6 hours depending on the traffic and how many speeding laws you break.

This was my first time on an Odyssey coach. It cost S$110 a person (return). This could possibly be the most expensive bus service for this route and competes very closely with Areoline. I have to admit, the money spent on it was worth it because it was definitely my most comfortable trip to KL. I actually prefer this to flying.

OK, no point me rambling on here, let me show you some pictures and explain along the way.

This is what the bus looks like from the outside. I actually like the professional look and colour scheme and really stands out as premium compared to other buses that use loud colours and tacky phrases.

This is what the bus looks like on the inside. Above is from the front, and below is from my seat looking out.

Now for the exciting part. That’s me using the WiFi to check mail. If you’re ever within 10 metres of these buses in Malaysia and want to borrow a little bandwidth, you can whip out your WiFi-enabled device and try to connect to “odyssey[bus number]” SSID. Mine was odyssey1603. The fidelity of the connection isn’t perfect. I felt it was close to 70% up time. While in the bus, there’s no issue getting the WiFi signal, always full bars. The only problem is the backhaul. My guess is that the router is connected to a 3G data modem which gets a connection where the network is strong. At times along the highway download speeds were slow or even absent, but near KL and JB it was pretty good.

Every seat on the bus feels like a quality airline flight with its own entertainment system. But unlike the one you get on Singapore Airlines, this one looks like a home-grown system. It has both a English and Chinese lables on its controls and the movies have A and B sides–you know what that means–VCDs! All of the content was digitised and very well delivered through the client box and Ethernet cables under every seat.

Lastly, here’s the view of the “cockpit”. It is actually quite amusing to listen to the cabin crew welcoming you onboard and introducing the Captain. Short of the phrase, “…we hope you enjoy your flight…” you would have thought it was a Boeing you just hopped on.

That’s it from me. Maybe you can try it out yourself and let me know what you thought. Would like to see other coach services step up to meet the needs of the technorati. It was a rather productive 5 hours for me.