The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District , is negotiating with a inauguration for a Wi - Fi meshing that would leave fast cyberspace admittance to riders throughout its 104 - geographical mile regional rail organization .
BART would not pay anything for the connection , which would be pay for by passenger subscriptions and advertising , according to Wi - Fi Rail , a fellowship establish near Sacramento that say it has four patents pending on its Wi - Fi technology for preset paths such as railroad and roads .
Municipal wireless meshwork have had a unvoiced clip financially , but public passage declare oneself a daily captive audience that is growing as gasoline prices resurrect . Wi - Fi Rail estimates that within three year , as many as 20 percent of BART ’s 180,000 unconstipated riders will pledge to the avail , consort to Michael Cromar , chief fiscal officer of Wi - Fi Rail .
Wi - Fi Rail has been test the system for about a year on a reaching of caterpillar track in business district San Francisco as well as on an outside test rail . More than 9,000 hoi polloi have sign up up to habituate the system and have signalise on more than 42,000 times , Cromar say .
Now BART and the company are in negotiations on the terms of a full deployment , in phases , which would take as much as two year . On Thursday , BART stave presented an update at a encounter of the transit system ’s add-in of managing director .
Unlike other , established Wi - Fi supplier , Wi - Fi Rail was willing to build the web , for an estimated $ 20 million , at no cost to BART , the office enjoin . Like Sprint Nextel , which operates cellular base stations along a busy stretching of rails in San Francisco , Wi - Fi Rail will have to pop the question wholesale capacity to other serve providers to resell , said BART spokesman Linton Johnson .
The transportation agency will use the wireless bandwidth to adjust up its in - railcar security cameras for lively viewing , and it plans to also put cover in cars that give service info to rider , he enounce . BART would also get a licensing fee from Wi - Fi Rail .
rider will connect right away to a received Cisco Systems memory access head on each cable car , which in turn will link up up to the trackside internet . Underground , that arrangement will use deliberately unshielded coaxal line , called “ talebearing coax , ” and out-of-door section of the track will be served using solar - powered parabolical antennas .
Neither side estimated how farsighted negotiation for the full buildout would take . But once talks are concluded , the first stage of the web should be land up and pay off commercial-grade service launch in about four months , consort to Cromar .
