WiFi now live at Bloor & St. George subway stations

WiFi is now live at two TTC subway stations as part of a pilot project designed to gauge performance prior to a more widespread roll out in the years to come. As of this morning passengers at Bloor-Yonge and St. George stations are able to access the internet, send email, and post photos of their commute to Instagram. There's no cellular service as of yet, so in the absence of third party apps, texts and phone calls are not possible at present.

In the midst of a major delay between Lawrence and Bloor stations this morning, I tried out the new service to see how well it works. Good news. If my experience is any indication the signal is strong, the network easy to locate, and the mandatory pre-advertisement short (15 seconds). The network is designed to automatically remember devices, so you won't have to join each time you pass through one of these stations, even if you do need to suffer through the ad, which might be a pain if you only have about a minute to reply to an email before the next train arrives.

Today is a soft launch with an official event to come in December, but there's obviously no reason to wait before getting online. What you will have to wait for is the service to become available at other stations. The current pipe dream plan is to provide WiFi and cellular service at 61 stations by 2017, but in the absence of a contract with local cellular carriers, that seems increasingly unlikely. But, hey, even WiFi is progress, and it'd be great to see it made available in more stations as the cellular negotiations take place.