Final Letter Audit Report on the Telecommunication Services on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority Queens Buses Phase I

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The objective of this audit was to determine whether the telecommunication services in the New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) buses in Queens enable Wi-Fi and USB charging capabilities and are operating effectively.

In December 2015, MTA entered into a contract with Cellco Partnership, doing business as Verizon Wireless, granting Verizon Wireless the right to supply and deliver wireless voice and data services for a period of five years on the MTA bus system. The contract stipulates that Verizon Wireless will provide services, certain hardware, software and other components and data plans in connection with the MTA’s project to purchase, install and integrate an onboard public Wi-Fi system.  According to the contract’s “Wi-Fi Terms of Service” provision, “the service is provided as a free amenity to New York City Transit Authority (NYCTA) customers for entertainment and educational purposes and it’s not intended to be a designated public forum.”  The provision further states that the service is not supposed to be used for multi-media streaming, continuous data transmission or broadcasts, automatic data feeds, automated machine to machine connections or peer to peer (P2P) file sharing, voice over internet protocol or any application that is not made available to customer-users by NYCTA and uses excessive network capacity.  Further, the service is not intended to be used as a substitute or a back-up for private lines or a dedicated data connection.

In March 2016, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that the MTA would add 2,042 new buses to its transportation fleet over a five-year period.  The new buses, which have a distinctive blue-and-yellow color scheme (new-look buses), represent a $1.3 billion investment of capital program resources and will replace almost 40 percent of the pre-existing fleet.  The new buses will include free Wi-Fi hotspots and 35-55 USB charging ports located throughout each bus.

In May 2016, the MTA began putting the first 75 new-look buses, equipped with Wi-Fi service and USB charging ports, into service.  The service began in Queens along the Q10 bus route between the JFK Depot and the Baisley Park Depot, and along the Q111, Q113 and Q114 bus routes; all 75 buses were in service on those routes by December 2017.  In the interim, in March 2017, the first of 43 new-look Select Bus Service (SBS) buses arrived at the Casey Stengel Depot in Queens and went into service along the Q44 bus route.

Results

We found that, overall, the telecommunication services provided by Verizon Wireless are generally operating as intended in the MTA’s Queens buses.  We tested 144 MTA buses in Queens with Wi-Fi and/or USB capability, which consisted of all 76 new-look buses and 68 Express buses.  All 76 new look buses and 63 of the 68 Express buses were equipped with both Wi-Fi and USB ports.  Our tests showed that the MTA Wi-Fi network operated effectively on 122 of the 139 buses that were equipped with Wi-Fi (88 percent).  On those buses, we were able to connect to the wireless network and browse various news, entertainment and social media websites.  We also found that the MTA’s Wi-Fi network appropriately restricted access to multi-media video streaming websites such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and VuDu.  However, we also found that the Wi-Fi network did not operate effectively on 11 of 76 of the new look buses and 6 of the 63 Express buses we tested.

We also tested the USB ports in all 76 new-look buses in Queens and sampled 68 of the 209 Queens Express buses for a total of 8,124 ports.  We found that 8,018 of the 8,124 USB charging ports we tested (99 percent) were working as intended; in those instances, we were able to connect and charge phones utilizing the tested buses’ USB ports. However, we also found that 70 of the 4,180 USB ports on New Look buses and 36 of the 3, 944 ports on Express buses were not operational.

We recommend that the MTA and the NYCTA periodically perform tests to ensure that their wireless network and USB charging capabilities, once installed, are functioning properly.

In their written responses, MTA and NYCTA agreed with the report’s recommendation. In response to our recommendation that MTA and NYCTA periodically perform tests to ensure that their wireless network and USB charging capabilities, once installed, are functioning properly, MTA and NYCTA agree and NYCTA stated that, “[b]uses management agrees with the audit recommendation to periodically perform tests to ensure that their wireless network and USB charging capabilities, once installed, are functioning properly’.”