Every station on Montreal's Orange Line now has cellphone service

Montrealers can now take metro trips to Laval without ever losing their cellphone signal. Montmorency was the last station on the Orange Line to be added to the mobile network, meaning every stop from Côte-Vertu to Montmorency is now fully connected to cellphone service.

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) announced that 47 of the underground network’s 68 stations in Montreal are now set up to the big four wireless service providers, Bell, Rogers, Telus and Videotron.

The next step in the underground network connection is the eastern part of the Blue Line, between the Jean-Talon and Saint-Michel stations which “should be connected by the end of the year,” according to the STM. By 2020, mobile coverage will be available throughout the entire STM network.

Montreal’s Orange Line is the STM’s busiest, both in terms of ridership and length with 30 km of tunnels.

The $50-million project involves installing antennas, fiber optics, equipment and cables during the two and a half hours per day when the metros don’t run. The cutting-edge 3G, 4G and 4G LTE technologies and construction are being funded entirely by the four wireless providers.

Tests were conducted to measure the network’s speed, coverage, reliability, capacity and usage.

So long, playing solitaire on the phone while riding the metro, you’ve served us well.

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