MBTA launches free wifi pilot program for greater Boston area.

Posted by Ryan

January 28, 2008

This post is based primarily for readers in the greater Boston area, all though it’s an interesting program so you still might want to read it.

MBTA: Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority WIFI

They say: As one of the first services of its kind on commuter rail trains in the U.S., our free T Wi-Fi Commuter Rail Connect test program strives to provide free Internet access for your laptop, cell phone, PDA or Wi-Fi enabled device. In fact, any commuter rail customer riding in a coach participating in the free T Wi-Fi Commuter Rail Connect Test Program may be able to access the Internet via their enabled laptop or wireless device.

I say: I’m probably the last person who would say anything nice about the MBTA. Whether it’s the rate hike that just took place, the slow and unreliable service or the sometimes rude and unhelpfully employees the MBTA just doesn’t have much going for them lately. With all of these negative things I must be honest and say when I read about this pilot program I wasn’t really getting my hopes up but so far I’ve had a great experience.

I read in the Metro this morning that they were offering this program on the line that I take into Boston(Worcester line) so once aboard I decided to give it a try. I took out my trusty iPhone and searched for networks, there were about 10 so I waited until we started moving to see which ones dropped away. Once we were about a mile away they all dropped but one so I connected to it and opened up Safari. Bam, full Internet access on my iPhone and it was quick, I knew this wasn’t the EDGE network that comes with the iphone because pages were loading in seconds not minutes. I spent about 10 minutes checking my email, news feeds and blogs using my iPhone at blazing speeds and I was impressed but this was just my iPhone, I decided I would have to break my laptop in order to get a real feel for the speed.

I booted up my Thinkpad and within a minute or so I was able to find and connect to the wifi signal. For easy comparison I started with my morning routine. I checked my email, checked my rss reader and checked a few forums and just as I do at home I had them all open on different browser tabs. I was switching pages as fast as they could load, the connection felt very similar to broadband probably because it’s based off Sprint’s EV-DO service and it had very few slowdowns. For the rest of the train ride I continued to browse around the Internet and the speed made me forget I was moving 70 mph on a train headed into town. I’m looking forward to the train ride back home in hopes that the experience is similar and possibly even better if I get a seat to sit down in.

Possible Issues:

Security, users will want to make sure they keep security mind. Read post of secure email.
Dead-spots. All though I only hit one if they roll this out to all of lines I’m sure there will be more.
Thousands of users on one connection. Since this is a pilot not many people are aware of it so the speeds are still good. Give it a few months and then we’ll see how well the service works when everyone is streaming movies and playing games online.

Below are some screen shots of the speed. The first one is the speed as taken while I was on the train and the second is the speed taken from the office once I got into town. As you can see it’s pretty close.