With new tunnel, longer dead zone for cellphones
For all the awesome engineering and technology that make up the Big Dig, the newest tunnel in the $14.6 billion project will lack one basic function that most drivers desire -- cellphone service.
Drivers on Interstate 93 south are scheduled to begin traveling underground Saturday, joining their signal-less counterparts on the northbound side, which also lacks cellphone reception. There is no cellphone reception in the I-90 extension under Fort Point Channel, either, although drivers can make and take calls in the Ted Williams Tunnel. That means the Big Dig cellphone dead zone will reach nearly 6 miles. More of the project will be without service than with it.
The reason for this has to do with money, not engineering. The Big Dig wants to raise as much revenue as possible from telecommunications companies for the right to install and rent space for antennas in the tunnels. The project is counting on millions from that revenue to partly offset cost overruns of three years ago.
But the cellphone companies, normally in fierce competition with one another, are in uniform agreement in telling Big Dig officials that they won't pay the kind of charges the project successfully negotiated for the right to wire the Ted Williams Tunnel, which was done before the recent industry-wide collapse.
Paul Trane, an analyst with the Somerville-based Telecommunications Insight Group, said Big Dig project managers were confident they had something extremely valuable to lease, antenna space in tunnels, just at the point when cellphone providers started cutting back on costs.
"Big Dig officials," Trane said, "will find they need to find a better balance between providing service for customers and meeting revenue needs."
The providers say they want to offer customers service in the tunnels, but the rent has to be affordable. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, has proposed that the six major telecommunications companies pay $1.5 million to $2.5 million a year in rent -- and that's after pitching in to pay for the $10 million installation of what is essentially a long antenna through the I-93 and I-90 tunnels.
That revenue will be on top of the nearly $900,000 the project collects annually from the companies for running antennas through the Ted Williams Tunnel.
"We are negotiating with the companies but it has proved to be challenging because there are multiple parties who have to agree, and the companies do not all approach the deal the same way," said Doug Hanchett, Turnpike Authority spokesman.
Hanchett said project managers hope to have a deal in principle "in the next couple of months." Then the installation of the shared antenna would begin, and cellphone reception would follow sometime after.
Hanchett described the major providers -- AT&T Wireless, Cingular, Nextel, Sprint PCS, T-Mobile USA, and Verizon Wireless -- as each having different concerns. But the companies' representatives sounded a similar note of caution when asked about paying high rates to offer service in the new tunnels.
"We're definitely interested in being in there. We serve the business community, and they commute through those tunnels and we would love to be able to provide service," said John Redman, spokesman for Nextel Communications. "But we have to invest our capital dollars wisely. We have a fiduciary responsibility to our shareholders and a responsibility to our users, and we have to balance the two."
Alexa Kaufman, spokeswoman for Cingular, said the Big Dig deal is being considered. "We haven't signed on the dotted lines," she said.
Kaufman and others acknowledged the frustration of customers who are driving into an engineering marvel and lose cellphone reception.
"We expect to be in the tunnels by the first half of 2004," she said. "You want ubiquitous coverage for customers along the major corridors."
The lack of cellphone reception is not the only technological shortcoming in the new roadway system. The project has suffered through other problems.
Several million dollars had to be tapped from the project's contingency funds to fix a reception gap in public safety communications that was occurring at the mouth of tunnels.
The project also had to pay $11 million for a temporary system of traffic monitoring cameras and air-quality sensors -- the nervous system for the new roadway -- in the I-93 south tunnel. It still faces huge bills from Honeywell, the contractor that was supposed to do all that work.
The new I-93 south, from the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge to Dewey Square, is slated to open to traffic on Saturday.
Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com
