Wi-Fi Goes to Town: Seamless Internet Connectivity in Metropolitan Underground Transport

In recent years we have seen Wi-Fi move from a “hotspot ” model to fuller coverage patterns where connectivity is available everywhere, such as across university and enterprise campuses (recall, for example, the Eduroam service). As people have come to expect more from Wi-Fi of late, there has been concurrent interest in blanketing underground transit systems with wireless coverage, from Transport for London's involvement with Virgin Wireless to the New York Metropolitan Transport Authority's business relationship with the four US national mobile carriers. But these latter systems are focused on providing service to metropolitan underground platforms, frustratingly disconnecting and reconnecting users on their journey through the transit network. We describe work in progress aimed at truly seamless Internet connectivity for the hundreds of thousands of daily commuters utilising a densely-populated urban area’s metropolitan underground transport system, light rail, or surface roads. We envision hundreds of London commuters on a single train simultaneously watching YouTube videos, surfing the web, chatting with friends and family over video, and downloading files while moving through an underground transit tunnel in a train or car at 30-40 miles per hour