LIRR Penn Station Hotspot Field Report

8/14/08 Update Here.  I took the Iron Horse into the Big Town today, and checked out the LIRR's Penn Station waiting room hotspot.  The SSID's are LIRR_HOTSPOT_11G, and LIRR_HOTSPOT_11A, and are completely wide open, there's no splash page or other web login interface.  It runs off of a little Netgear RP614.  So kudos for putting in a tri-band access point.  One of the funny things I noticed, is that they are running it off of a Time Warner Business internet connection.   I'm not sure what the Terms of Service are, but I'm pretty sure the LIRR can do what it wants with that connection.  Pity the residential customers don't have the same leeway.  I found out about it via the LI BIZ BLOG, so hat tip to Henry and the gang for that.  Of course, it would be great if the LIRR would use this as a jumping off point to further web enable their customer facing communications, and use it as a marketing platform.

Comments

[Klaus Ernst]

Hi Craig,
greetings from the LIRR waiting room. My first time here. I bought a ticket to Woodside so I don't get thrown out.Did you ever get connected to CBSMobilezone?
Best,Klaus

[Craig Plunkett]

Hi Klaus,
Thanks for commenting, I did get connected to the CBSMobileZone with my BlackBerry Curve, eventually, but the portal was not designed with handhelds in mind, so I couldn't really get past the splash page without my fingers freezing. This was in February.