Boston ferries gain Wi-Fi: The MTBA has put Internet access on its 11 commuter boats that serve 4,500 daily riders. Ridership is way up this year.

Bangkok builds slow Wi-Fi network, free for first year: The details are a bit sketchy, but the government has built a 15,000-hotspot network that offer 64 Kbps connections, and will be free (with an access card) for the first year. The government is handing out 500,000 such cards at shopping malls before this week's launch.

While this may sound familiar to those following municipal Wi-Fi, this deal is substantially different: it's much more like unwiring an airport than a city, and thus the expense in unwiring should be quickly outweighed by the uptake by passengers. City-wide Wi-Fi promised 1 to 4 Mbps in most cases; WiFi Rail has tested out at 10s of Mbps--their technology turns rail segments into wireless LANs with excellent reception. They terminate with fiber all over, so aggregation and backhaul isn't an issue. And unlike an airport, where travelers might turn to 3G cell data, those solutions don't work in the underground portions of BART and many other places along the rights of way due to obstructions.

And this isn't a "we have a great idea, let us build it" scenario. WiFi Rail has had test projects running for nearly a year, with a segment in San Francisco active for part of that time, and those tests determined the board's interest in proceeding. WiFi Rail told IDG News Service that 9,000 people have signed up for the current system and used 42,000 sessions.

WiFi Rail's network is currently free, and charges won't commence until the first stage is done. Lee said that fees, which will be about a dollar a day with subscriber discounts but are part of the negotiation with BART, will be charged at a 50-percent rate after the first phase is done until the whole network is complete. IDG notes that the company will be required to resell access at wholesale rates, and I expect aggregators like iPass (based in the Bay Area) and Boingo (further south in Santa Monica) will leap at reselling BART service, just as they do ferry-Fi here in the greater Puget Sound region.

The first route to be unwired will run from Balboa Park in San Francisco to two ends of a Y in Oakland, Lake Merritt and 19th St (see system map). For the 180,000 regular business commuters of the system, of which WiFi Rail wants to achieve an initial 20-percent uptake among, continuous Wi-Fi service should be a godsend against boredom and overwork. Yes, I know, for some, it will mean more expectation of work, but for others, it's a way to be mildly productive while en route, avoiding longer hours in the office or more work at home.

I need to go ride the ferries here during rush hour to talk to commuters and see what usage is likely on BART. There are tens of thousands of regular ferry commuters with an average 30-minute crossing as part of a longer (45 to 90 minute) trip each way into Seattle and other communities. It's a reasonable comparison with BART both in scale and nature of passengers.

What say you, Californian BART riders? Do you look forward to iPod touch, iPhone, BlackBerry (with Wi-Fi), and laptop connectivity? Or do you want to stay unplugged?

The agency's Seattle field office, along with the Washington Joint Analytical Center, was still seeking the men's identities and whereabouts Wednesday as ferry service was temporarily shutdown when a suspicious package was found in a ferry bathroom and taken away by authorities.

"We had various independent reports from passengers and ferry employees that these two guys were engaging in what they described as unusual activities on the ferries," Special Agent Robbie Burroughs, a spokeswoman for the FBI in Washington state, told FOXNews.com.

"They felt that these guys were showing an undue interest in the boat itself, in the layout, the workers and the terminal, and it caused them enough concern that they contacted law enforcement about it," she told FOXNews.com.

The two were photographed by a ferry employee about a month ago, and those photographs were distributed to ferry employees three weeks ago by local law enforcement.

Turns out they were tourists, not terrorists:

Turns out the men, both citizens of a European Union nation, were captivated by the car-carrying capacity of local ferries.

"Where these gentlemen live, they don't have vehicle ferries. They were fascinated that a ferry could hold that many cars and wanted to show folks back home," FBI Special Agent Robbie Burroughs said Monday.

[...]

Two weeks ago, the men appeared at a U.S. Embassy and identified themselves as the men in the photo released to the media in August, a couple of weeks after they took a ferry from Seattle to Vashon Island during a business trip, Burroughs said.

They came forward because they worried they'd be arrested if they traveled to the U.S. and so provided proof of their identities, employment and the reason for their July trip to Seattle, according to the FBI.