Public transport Wi-Fi is hot: SF BART to be unwired
The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is negotiating with Sacramento-based Wi-Fi Rail for the installation of Wi-Fi access in BART trains that traverse the Bay Area. BART plans to offer free (with ads) and paid Wi-Fi service. BART will not be paying for the network; Wi-Fi Rail will bear all of the costs, approximately $20 million. Seen that model before?
For those who commute everyday from one end of the Bay Area to the other, which can often take more than 30 minutes, having access to Wi-Fi will help them get some work done. The service might provide additional incentive for people to get out of their cars, although to be honest, I think the price of benzine (over $4.00 per gallon) is probably the main reason people will be taking BART more often.
Public transport Wi-Fi is hot right now all over the world because more people are using public transport (traffic jams, high cost of benzine) and public transport operators are trying to get passengers onto their buses and trains by offering more amenities.
Recently, the French TGV announced the launch of Wi-Fi service on the high-speed trains between Paris and Amsterdam, as well as Paris and Frankfurt. In the UK, bus and railway operators have been rolling out Wi-Fi service to attract more passengers. For certain railway and bus companies, the ability to install cameras and transmit video live (for security reasons) provides an added incentive to install Wi-Fi.
What kind of backhaul do they use? Mostly 3G, but in areas without 3G, they use satellite and occasionally, WiMAX. Dramatic declines in the cost of 3G backhaul have made it much more economical to offer Wi-Fi to bus and train passengers.
In the case of BART, Macworld reports that “[r]iders will connect directly to a standard Cisco Systems access point on each car, which in turn will link up to the trackside network. Underground, that system will use deliberately unshielded coaxial cable, called “leaky coax,” and outdoor sections of the track will be served using solar-powered parabolic antennas.”
Not too long ago, Caltrain issued public tenders for the deployment of Wi-Fi on the trains between SF and Silicon Valley. Unfortunately they rejected both bids and the project is on hold. Read more about it here.
Related news on public transport Wi-Fi:
Wi-Fi Rail trial flowers in California’s Bay Area
Thalys hits glitch in impressive train launch
Free Wi-Fi adds to comforts on luxury bus between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur
Glasgow bus riders to get mobile Wi-Fi
Reading Transport to deliver free Wi-Fi on buses
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Jinkees! In WasheDC we have been lucky just to get our cell phones to work in the subway.
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