First some facts:
19 million people a year take The Staten Island Ferry.
The trip takes 25 minutes. excluding wait time at the terminals.
There are nine boats.
So what would it take to put WiFi on the nine boats, set up an antenna that could link to each of these nine boats and support a hundred simultaneous users, let’s say, as the boats traveled between Manhattan and Staten Island?
If you said $500K to install and maintain Year One, that comes down to less than 3cts per rider, Year One, and perhaps 1cts Years Two and Three.
Not all 19 million people will be using WiFi, of course. Assume that use would start out at 1% and grow to 5% over the next two years as device density (how many people have laptops, handhelds, tablets, iphones) grows.
The question becomes whether advertising and providing enhanced services to those 200K to 1 million people who would use the network would cost justify the whole thing.
If the wifi portals on the boats had interactive maps, local listings and local content, what would value would that create for the users? How would offering commuters in those numbers a means to stay productive and connected generate economic benefits, not least for Staten Island itself?
How could WiFi on the ferry help Staten Island showcase itself to New York?
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