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August 28, 2007

Delays in Washington State Ferry-Fi

By Glenn Fleishman

The ferries are unwired, just not all of them: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the usual suspects of location, location, location are bedeviling the addition of Wi-Fi-based Internet access to several ferry runs in Washington State. The ferry system in my home state carries 50 percent of the ferry passenger trips in the U.S. A good half of its routes by traveler numbers have had Wi-Fi from some time, supplied by Parsons.

But it’s the last part that’s problematic. Siting issues have held up placement of antennas, which in turn led to trickier engineering tasks. Parsons said it was optimistic in its deadlines for adding Wi-Fi, thinking they were ahead of the game; the executive in charge of the project says ruefully they should have stuck with contracted target dates publicly and then been happy if they’d beaten the marks.

The reporter rode some ferries to talk to passengers to see if they were missing the Wi-Fi access. None were. The article concludes with a bit of poetry, following one passenger’s lament about the cost of the service, which was too high for his casual uses of email and YouTube: “And there was nothing left to watch on the way home but the shimmering blue water and the seagulls flying overhead.”

Posted by Glennf at August 28, 2007 1:50 PM

Categories: Aquatic

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