Hey Link riders: Cellular service is rolling out to Sound Transit’s underground facilities

Tired of los­ing cel­lu­lar ser­vice when you descend into an under­ground Link light rail sta­tion? Then rejoice, for Sound Tran­sit has announced that cus­tomers on all four of Amer­i­ca’s major wire­less providers (Ver­i­zon, AT&T, Sprint, and T‑Mobile) will soon be able to get a sig­nal in its under­ground facil­i­ties, which include the Down­town Seat­tle Tran­sit Tun­nel, Bea­con Hill tun­nel, and Uni­ver­si­ty Link tunnels.

Said the agency in a news release:

Sound Tran­sit has part­nered with wire­less infra­struc­ture provider Mobil­i­tie to design and install a Dis­trib­uted Anten­na Sys­tem (DAS) net­work that will allow tran­sit rid­ers to use their cell phones while trav­el­ing under­ground. The DAS net­work, which has been under con­struc­tion since ear­li­er this year, is begin­ning a phased roll­out this week. By late Sep­tem­ber, the Mobil­i­tie net­work will pro­vide wire­less cell­phone cov­er­age to the tun­nel between Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and West­lake in Down­town Seat­tle, fol­lowed lat­er this fall to the tun­nels in Down­town Seat­tle and to Bea­con Hill in 2017.

T‑Mobile cus­tomers will be the first to get ser­vice in the U‑Link tun­nels (start­ing this week), fol­lowed by cus­tomers of Ver­i­zon and AT&T in Sep­tem­ber. Sprint will fol­low along some­time after that, Sound Tran­sit says.

Because the DAS net­work installed by Mobiltie is so new, con­nec­tiv­i­ty ought to be decent, though it remains to be seen how the net­work holds up when there’s a lot of demand. The com­pa­ny’s “high-den­si­ty wire­less infra­struc­ture is designed to enable rich, inter­ac­tive mobile expe­ri­ences, includ­ing real-time video stream­ing, 5G, and oth­er mobile appli­ca­tions,” Sound Tran­sit says.

That sug­gests that rid­ers who want to watch YouTube, Net­flix, Hulu, HBO Go, or oth­er video sites on their smart­phone, tablet, or note­book will be able to do so.

Pub­lic Wi-Fi is cur­rent­ly avail­able at the DST­T’s four sta­tions (Inter­na­tion­al Dis­trict, Pio­neer Square, Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, West­lake) but cel­lu­lar ser­vice is spot­ty or nonex­is­tent in the tran­sit tun­nels, ham­per­ing rid­ers’ abil­i­ty to make plans with friends and fam­i­ly, or sim­ply get some work done.

That’s all about to change now.

The avail­abil­i­ty of cel­lu­lar ser­vice in the tun­nels will also mean that phone con­ver­sa­tions can be held under­ground. Hope­ful­ly, Sound Tran­sit will dou­ble down on post­ing rid­ing eti­quette reminders to encour­age rid­ers to refrain from hav­ing loud phone con­ver­sa­tions on trains, bus­es, and sta­tion platforms.