Laptop-wielding Rowan Dore's report - possibly the world's first newspaper article written and transmitted via the broadband service on board a train travelling between London Victoria and Brighton

at 90mph (The Argus, April 14) - prompts a question.

Why in the 21st Century do the 50 miles between London and Brighton still take trains just under an hour when the first overhead-powered motortrains on the Brighton line in 1933 took the same time?

The sophisticated new Electrostar trains, with a top speed of more than 100mph, should surely do the journey a little faster than this?

Perhaps the answer lies with the privatisation and under-investment in southern England's railways, which has left a totally inadequate, bottlenecked, disjointed, skeleton network, where journey times are slower now than in the steam locomotive era.

A Channel Tunnel rail passenger travelling from Ashford International past Brighton to Southampton Central will face - without delays

- a six-hour, 100-mile journey on the Coastway shuttle service.

Is it any wonder coast roads are gridlocked, while rail passengers, if they can get a seat or a table, are being offered a broadband service to take their minds off the slow train services?

-John Stanaway, Hove