Morning commute can now feature other people's cell phones, laptops

If the 10-minute ride from Oakland to San Francisco was your morning moment of zen meditation, the news that BART's enabled wireless for customers of participating carriers Sprint/Nextel, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and MetroPCS may be reason to get some earplugs or sound-deadening headphones.  On the other hand, if you can't bear to be seperated from your mobile device and/or your twitter stream for even a moment, BART's new capabilities might be a fabulous holiday present. It's definitely a gift for BART, who will gain a projected revenue of $742,896 from fees from the wireless carriers for 2010.

In the press announcement, BART Board President James Fang said "We are pleased to end 2009 by enhancing wireless amenities to our 160,900 customers who ride through the Transbay Tube each weekday, providing seamless above and below ground mobile service for BART customers riding between Oakland and San Francisco." Basically, this means that BART passengers now have continuous wireless access from the West Oakland BART Station to Balboa Park. Four Square, anyone?

Not surprisingly, BART will continue to roll out expanded wireless on its transportation network. Upcoming installation projects are already announced:
    •    First quarter 2010, Oakland WYE, 12th, 19th and Lake Merritt Stations)
    •    Second Quarter 2010, Ashby, Berkeley, North Berkeley Stations and connecting tunnels
    •    Third Quarter 2010, Berkeley Hills Tunnel
    •    2011, South San Francisco, San Bruno and connecting tunnels.

Of course, the twitterati started posting about this announcement right away, but the first person to post about using it said it didn't work for him.

"Supposedly there is wireless service in the tube on Bart now. As expected crappy didn't work this am of course," twittered local photog Thomas Hawk around 8:30 am, who soon after complained on his blog that his 3G iPhone could not get a Edge signal in the tunnel.