There's no realistic chance Amtrak can lower its prices in the next few years, so it's looking for another way to win customers: Good Wi-Fi. As in, live Tweet your Scandal marathon on Netflix good. Amtrak has a key advantage over bus companies here: It owns the land its trains run on, so installing the necessary hardware is not a big deal.

On Monday, Amtrak announced it is soliciting bids for a proof-of-concept project that would provide at least 25 Mbps of bandwidth to each train running between Boston and Washington, D.C. The publicly-funded railroad, which is operated as a for-profit corporation, has been offering free but mediocre Wi-Fi since 2010. It started with 3G, pulling data from nearby cell towers, and upgraded to 4G in 2013.