Metro de Madrid will begin to update this year and will end next year, implementing 4G, WiFi and payment of tickets via Android smartphone.

When we go by train or metro we have significant coverage problems, something that today is a very important problem because we want to be interconnected at all times. The Spanish High Speed ​​(there is a sentence that prevents the use of the acronym AVE), has implemented a kind of WiFi paying quite expensive and that goes by data packet, quite ridiculous indeed. In the coming months, Metro de Madrid will modernize to provide 4G and WiFi coverage and will begin to implement a payment system by smartphone.

Now they are going to implement works that were already planned, but due to the cuts suffered, they have been impossible to undertake. Reforms and improvements are expected in the tunnels of the stations, adding a total of eighty elevators throughout the network, in addition to undertaking other improvements at a lower cost. The work will end in 2018 so that all Metro de Madrid stations have 4G coverage and for the moment free WiFi service will be installed on Line 8, which connects to the airport and also in central stations such as Sol, but is not available. have determined, for now.

The physical metro tickets (on paper) are obsolete and absurd, although changing all the access machines in one go is completely economically unfeasible. This next year some will begin to be replaced by a rechargeable wallet card, which possibly validates the ticket by NFC and which will be activated by approaching the machines, although these are unconfirmed data. The disappearance of the physical ticket will occur in other services, such as commuter, EMT and interurban buses.

Another point is the payment by smartphone, although it will be something different than expected. It will not be a simple validation by bringing the terminal closer to the lathes, what will be done is as we have commented, establish a recharge card on the Android smartphone itself (apparently it will not be available in the first instance for iPhone). Android has been chosen for security reasons (curious to say the least).

Source: Expansion