Subway riders will finally be able to telecommute now that the MTA is moving ahead with plans to install cellular and Internet service on subway platforms.
Six stations will be wired first as part of a two-year pilot program, and once the system meets the MTA’s approval, service will be installed at the remaining stations over the following four years. The project is slated to take far longer than it took to install similar service in other transit systems around the world.
The 10-year contract with Transit Wireless LLC will pay the MTA at least $46 million from revenues the consortium receives from wireless carriers, officials said.
Transit Wireless LLC is comprised of communications and construction companies that beat out a bid by AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile.
Transit Wireless hired former Sen. Al D’Amato as a consultant on the contract bid, but the company would not say what role, if any, he played in negotiating the deal.
Transit Wireless is made up of Dianet Communications, Nab Construction, which has done many subway station renovations, and QWireless.
There will not be wireless service in the subway tunnels, but riders in cars stopped at stations will be able to pick up signals.
Platform pay phones aren’t obsolete just yet. It will take six years to wire all 277 underground
subway stations for cellular and Internet service, officials said yesterday.
Cell service for station platforms was first put out to bid in 2005, but the MTA dropped the call after a series of hang-ups over the scope and terms of the contract.
The MTA said cell service is one of several recommendations that a task force studying the agency’s response to flooding earlier this summer will make today.
But elected officials, who have been calling on the agency to put in emergency 911 service at the very least, said the timetable was too slow.
“It took Alexander Graham Bell less time to invent the telephone than it is taking the MTA to install cell service,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Queens) who was among those leading the charge for cell service. “I
would rather have basic emergency service in all stations quickly than a portable office in six stations.”