Subway tunnels are one of the few places in New York City where cell service at times is out of reach. Straphangers are a long way off from the MTA’s 2032 goal of cell connectivity in all tunnels, but as soon as this fall, riders can expect more service in swaths of the system.
Transit officials say by this fall customers traveling along the northern half of the G train, between Court Square in Queens and Hoyt-Schermerhorn in Brooklyn, will get long-anticipated cell service in the tunnels that link nine subway stations. So too will riders of the 4 and 5 lines traveling through the East River tunnel between Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. And next up is a stretch of the A and C lines in Brooklyn, between the High Street and Euclid Avenue stations, a project that is seeking contractor proposals by September and doesn’t currently have an expected completion date.
The patchwork of projects is because crews with the Midtown-based Boldyn Networks — a telecommunications company that’s been building cell infrastructure in the subway since 2007 — are wiring tunnels as the MTA carries out already-planned work to minimize service disruptions for commuters. Boldyn, formerly known as Transit Wireless, inked a deal with the MTA in 2022 to carry out the privately funded $600 million work to install cell cables and equipment along 418 miles of underground track (roughly the distance of New York City to Cleveland).
The project boils down to giving commuters the convenience of being able to make a call or get some work done while they’re traveling through the subway. Boldyn and transit officials, however, also position the undertaking as a matter of public safety. Cell service throughout a ride is about “the ability to feel safe, because if there’s a problem, you have a way to communicate with people,” said Jeff Garte, Boldyn’s head of U.S. Transit and Government Solutions, during an October transportation summit hosted by City & State in Lower Manhattan.
Unlike most mass transit projects, taxpayers aren’t footing the bill. Boldyn is paying for the 10-year effort to upgrade subway tunnels, and also to expand free wireless internet to 191 above-ground stations and to 21 Staten Island Railway stations. The company plans to monetize the infrastructure and pay for the project by leasing out fiber optic cables to network providers (Boldyn’s already partnered with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile), collecting licensing fees and selling data about how users utilize its system, according to contract documents. Boldyn took a similar approach for the 2017 launch of cell service in the system’s 281 underground stations — a roughly $300 million project.
As it stands now, subway riders can scroll on their phone or make calls while waiting for a train. And they get short bursts of cell service while on trains as they pass through stations.
How reliable that service is can depend on the subway line. A 2016 study (the most recent data available) by the Virginia-based Global Wireless Solutions looked at cell performance across the system’s stations and found that stops on the 4 and 6 lines had the fastest performing service, while those along the J line tended to be the slowest. At the time, the 103rd Street station on the 1 line was persistently speedy, while straphangers at Spring Street on the A, C and E lines were most likely to struggle making a call. Then-Comptroller Scott Stringer similarly sent auditors into 150 stations in 2016 to test out the network and gave the service a thumbs up — auditors successfully connected to the free Wi-Fi in stations and managed to download e-books from Penguin Random House’s website.
Transit officials say they expect Boldyn’s installation of new fiber optics cables and modern telecommunications infrastructure to take things further, and enhance connectivity throughout the subway. Eventually, the equipment will keep riders connected their entire train ride.
But the work has been fairly slow going. One of the few stretches of tunnel that has cell service is the Midtown shuttle between Grand Central and Times Square, which went live in September 2024. Other major cities, such as Chicago and Washington, D.C., have provided cell service throughout their metro systems since 2015 and 2021, respectively.
Jessica Mathew, a senior advisor for special projects at the MTA, said the agency is in the mist of determining which train tunnels are next to receive cell service. But now that the MTA has approved a $68 billion plan to modernize its mass transit networks, officials say they plan to integrate the installation of cell infrastructure into a bevy of upcoming work in subway tunnels.
“Implementation is dependent on Boldyn getting track access for their build out, which we all know is tough in our subways,” said Matthew, “so we’ve been identifying synergies with capital projects across the system.”
Despite the slow pace, transit advocates say they count the project as a win for taxpayers.
“Partnering with others to pay for a valuable service to riders, that’s a thumb on the scale in favor of things,” said Danny Pearlstein, policy and communications director of the Riders Alliance, which advocates for mass transit improvements. “That $600 million — that’s how many new elevators? That’s how many new train cars that the MTA can direct its money toward?”
