This week, the New York City Transportation Authority announced plans to expand cellular coverage in all of the city's subway tunnels. The quality of the Wi-Fi signal at ground stations will improve, as well as at train stations in the most remote county of Staten Island. However, it is unlikely that these works will be fully completed in the next decade. The new technologies will be rolled out in phases as work is completed across the city.
More than $1 billion is planned to be invested over the next decade to provide passengers with a full range of on-train and station-to-station mobile communications services. A partnership with Transit Wireless, a 5G wireless infrastructure company, will make this possible across 673 km of subway tunnels.
Mobile and Wi-Fi are now available at all NYC subway stations — there are 281 — in 2017. However, the new project is to expand mobile and Wi-Fi coverage in hauls and remaining ground stations — there are 191 of them today, plus 21 Staten Island railroad stations.
On weekdays, public transport in New York carries about 3.5 million passengers. This is well below the average of 5.5 million per day in 2019.