MONTREAL – Bell, Rogers, Telus and Videotron flipped the switch on the first phase of the new $50 million mobile network for the Montreal metro.
The green line segment, which runs through the downtown area between the Guy-Concordia and Saint-Laurent stations, is now equipped with mobile technology including 3G, 4G and 4G LTE, allowing customers of all four wireless providers to browse the Internet, watch videos, listen to streamed music, make and receive calls from within the metro cars and throughout the tunnels and stations.
The project, first announced in September 2013, will take five to seven years to fully complete, and make Montreal one of only a handful of cities in the world where the underground subway is equipped with a 4G LTE mobile network. The $50 million investment is being shared equally among the four telecommunications companies.
According to the Société de transport de Montréal (STM), the focus over the next two years will be to deploy the wireless network in the most-travelled stations along the green and orange lines, between Beaudry and Guy-Concordia on the green line, and between Mont-Royal and Namur on the orange line. The Berri-UQAM station, which serves over 125,000 commuters per day, will be live by the end of 2014.
In photo from left to right : Martine Turcotte, vice chair Québec, Bell; Philippe Schnobb, chairman of the board, STM; François Gratton, president of Telus Québec and Atlantic Canada; Sylvain Roy, president, Rogers Quebec; Jean Novak, president, Videotron Business Solutions, president, Le SuperClub Videotron, senior vice-president, Sales Network, Retail.
