Verizon Wireless has reached an agreement with Transit Wireless to bring 3G and LTE coverage to New York City’s subway system, making it the fourth of the national carriers to boost its coverage and capacity by signing on to a new neutral-host distributed antenna system.
Sprint announced a similar deal with Transit Wireless last month, to cover all 277 underground subway stations by early 2014. The carrier just turned on its LTE service in portions of the Bronx and Brooklyn at the end of July. AT&T and T-Mobile US were the first wireless carriers to partner with Transit, and Boingo Wireless provides Wi-Fi coverage in the subway system as well.
William Bayne Jr., CEO of Transit Wireless, said that the company was “extremely pleased to gain Verizon’s participation.”
Subscribe now to get the daily newsletter from RCR Wireless News
“We have now secured partnerships with all four major wireless carriers to bring the vast majority of New Yorkers, visitors, government agency personnel, transit employees contractors and first responders the ability to be connected in the stations we’ve constructed a real milestone,” Bayne added.
The neutral-host DAS in the subway is designed, constructed, owned and operated by Transit Wireless; PCTel provided antennas for the system and DAS vendor Solid scored the deployment deal. The DAS system has been in the works for years, with the project approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority back in 2007 despite initial questions about whether carriers would agree to pay the fees to Transit Wireless in order to have their signals carried by the DAS installation. However, all four national carriers have now signed on.
Service was first offered in the fall of 2011, with an additional 30 stations added in April of this year.