The Bloor-Yonge subway station handles more than 200,000 passengers on a weekday, making it the busiest stop in Toronto. Any delay — and there are many — leads to a crush of people and a generally uncomfortable commute.
“We know where the devices are,” said Ken Ranger, chief executive of BAI Communications Canada. “And so there’s a bunch of things that you can do with that.” Furthermore, a service BAI would like to provide to all commuters has led to a public confrontation with Canada’s biggest telecommunications companies: BCE Inc., Rogers Communications Inc. and Telus Corp.
In New York, cell service is provided for the customers of AT&T Inc., Sprint Corp., T-Mobile US Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. by Transit Wireless, a company in which BAI is the majority shareholder.Ken Ranger “It’s something that, certainly, when I talk to my neighbours, they don’t understand,” Ranger said of the Toronto impasse. “We’re an infrastructure provider. We built a highway that anyone could put their proverbial cars on to get to their customers.
BAI has laid down more than 75 kilometres of fibre-optic cable and installed about 1,000 boxes throughout Toronto’s subway system that can be popped open and filled with whatever tech is required. Such partnerships are not that unusual anymore, said Matti Siemiatycki, interim director of the University of Toronto’s School of Cities, and the rise of all things digital has municipal governments turning to businesses for help in that particular area.
BAI’s interest in Canada is not limited to Toronto, either. Ranger said it has had “lots” of talks with transit agencies in Western Canada and Quebec, and suggested BAI’s technology could be applied to other sorts of transit hubs, such as airports. “While provides a foundation for privacy protections, it is outdated in the face of current digital technologies and practices such as sensors, big data analytics and artificial intelligence,” the commissioner’s annual report said.
So now I know why my Bell connected iPhone doesn’t work in the subway. Thanks.
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