The TTC will be discontinuing its free public Wi-Fi at all subway stations by the end of this year.
Earlier this week, the transit commission board members held a briefing where they decided the TConnect system, provided by Rogers, is no longer beneficial. According to the TTC, there were concerns regarding the system’s technology and infrastructure related to its reliability, performance and security for its users.
“We’ve seen a 65 per cent drop in use of TConnect since 5G connectivity for all carriers was introduced. When comparing subway trips to total logins, we know TCOnnect is only being used on two per cent of trips,” TTC Spokesperson Stuart Green said to Now Toronto in a statement on Thursday.
Green adds that the cost to upgrade this infrastructure would be $17 million and the TTC feels it is not a “wise investment” and they would rather use this money towards improving its core transit service.
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Nevertheless, the transit system says the TConnect system is separate from the TTC’s plan to bring 5G connectivity to the entire subway network.
“We continue to work with Rogers to get the 5G network fully built out and we’ll explore opportunities to enhance connectivity on the TTC and improve the customer experience in the process,” Green said.
In response to the move, the telecommunications giant says it was not part of the decision process and that the decision is solely on the TTC.
Green says the transit agency is “comfortable with the decision to let the service expire by the end of the year.”
“This is a TTC decision. The WiFi infrastructure at subway stations has reached its end of life and usage has dropped dramatically since we started rolling out 5G in the subway system,” a Rogers Spokesperson said to Now in a statement.
“We proposed options to the TTC to update or replace the equipment and they decided to decommission TConnect. The transit commission has never included WiFi services in their network contracts dating back to 2012, and the service will be wound down by the end of the year,” it continued.
Online, some users agree with the move, saying the free Wi-fi was not functional anyway.
“The wifi in the TTC stations was bad. Took forever to get log into, and useless when on the subway,” one X user said.
“You mean the platform wi-if that took 5 min to start and cut out the second you left the station, even if you did manage to get it started before your train arrived?” another user said.
Meanwhile, others disagree and argue that the city needs access to public Wi-fi.
“The fact that there are thousands of *other* places with free Wi-Fi in Toronto does not mean that TTC stations should not be among them…????” one X user commented.
“Sad because we need more public wifi, not less,” another user wrote.
“Instead of improving it, they wanna get rid of the free wifi in subway stations. This is such a Toronto thing. No one is interested in improving services,” another comment read.
According to Rogers, BAI Canada launched the Wi-Fi service at subway stations in December 2013, however the service was not part of their contract with the TTC. BAI managed to keep the service going through advertising but there continued to be under-investment over the years.
Additionally, the equipment TConnect uses has become obsolete and vendor support for the equipment is no longer provided as of April 30 of this year.
Rogers bought TConnect from BAI in April 2023 and earlier this year, it said it started the next phase of its plan to expand 5G services and 911 access to remaining underground subway stations.
