Starting today, Freedom Mobile customers in Toronto can use their cellphone while on the platform of every one of the Toronto Transit Commission’s (TTC) 75 subway stations.
In addition, as of Sunday, December 17th — when the city’s new York-Spadina subway extension opens to the public — those same customers will be able to use their cellphone inside of the six new stations and nine kilometres of tunnel that constitute the new Line 1 extension. For those not with Freedom, BAI Canada‘s T-Connect Wi-Fi will be available at the six new York-Spadina subway stations on the same day.
The cellular side of BAI Canada’s infrastructure supports both Freedom’s AWS-1 and AWS-3 networks, allowing those customers with a Band 66-compatible smartphone to take full advantage of the carrier’s recently launched LTE network. As with BAI’s past deployments, the newly installed cellular infrastructure is fully equipped to handle traffic from the Big Three carriers once they decide to join the network.
In September 2017, BAI Canada stated its Wi-Fi network was serving approximately 130,000 users per day. With the launch of both Wi-Fi and cellular service throughout the new York-Spadina extension, BAI Canada CEO Ken Ranger says he expects that number to increase.
BAI Canada plans to complete wiring the downtown core subway for cellular service by the end of summer 2018. In the spring, the company will sit down with the TTC to schedule when it can begin work on the other tunnels.
Ranger says he expects the company to complete cellular rollout within the next two to three years. The company is currently in the process of prototyping a system that will allow TTC subway trains to function as Wi-Fi hotspots, but does not currently have a time frame for when it expects to have Wi-Fi service inside the city’s subway tunnels.
“This is something we’ve been working on for the last number of years,” said Ranger in a phone interview with MobileSyrup. “We couldn’t be happier now that we’ve completed all stations, and that we’ve done it on time and when we said we would.”
BAI Canada won the 20-year, $25 million contract to outfit the TTC with Wi-FI and cellular service in 2013.
Source: BAI Canada
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