MassDOT reports it heard residents and elected officials who didn't like the idea of behemoth WiFi towers along commuter-rail tracks and has ordered the contractor building infrastructure for a new train-based WiFi network, BAI Communications, to come back with plans that use either existing utility poles or poles a lot shorter than 70 feet.

ZipCar founder and current MassDOT board member Robin Chase has started a new company that aims to equip vehicles - such as buses and garbage trucks - with WiFi gear. Business Insider reports on her new company's ideas for "a network of moving things," which in addition to providing roving WiFi service would also allow creation of citywide sensor networks to, well, sense things for the coming Internet of Things.

Via The Transit Wire.

The MBTA today announced a contract with a new WiFi provider for commuter rail it says will mean more reliable free access to e-mail for riders - and the option to add full Internet service for $15 a month.

InMotion Wireless will build a $5.6 million WiFi network for trains that will also cover commuter ferries and South, North and Back Bay stations, at no cost to the T. Installation begins this fall and will be fully complete in 18 months, the T says.

At-large Councilors Ayanna Pressley and Felix Arroyo say that rather than just let old payphones collect trash and rust, the city should use them to set up free wireless zones.

The councilors say Boston could use more places where people could get online for free:

There is a digital divide between different demographics and socioeconomic levels and such a program would expand access to the internet for more Boston residents.

The two will ask the full council tomorrow to approve a hearing on whether Boston could follow New York with a pilot of free, anonymous WiFi.

Massport has announced today that they are offering free Wifi for the next two years! Since Thanksgiving, WiFi access has been free at Logan and other airports around the country due to a sponsorship deal with Google to provide the access for free that only required you to click past a splash page announcing Google's sponsorship.

The two months showed a sixfold increase in usage at Logan according to Massport and they wanted to follow up on that by continuing the program with other sponsorship.

Mass. High Tech reports on Openairboston, the non-profit trying to build a citywide public WiFi network.

The effort initially focused on traditional wireless access points (like the ones you can see on lightpoles all over Brookline), but organizers realized that would prove impossibly expensive and so are now using a "mesh" approach, in which each subscriber's computer is essentially equipped to act as an access point through a cheapo router. The result: Free WiFi in parts of the Fenway.

Here's a good reason to secure your wireless internet. Hari Balakrishnan and Samuel Madden have been helping themselves to your WiFi to collect traffic data, a lucrative commercial field. They've been doing it for more than a year, rather than pay for internet connectivity like everyone else.

Well, Grove Hall and Dudley Square, at any rate: $9.95 a month for wireless access, in the first phase of Tom Menino's citywide wireless effort.

David Weinberger is sitting in the Brookline High School auditorium when he discovers why Brookline's municipal wireless system is awful - not only isn't it free, you have to sign up for a monthly plan, which makes it useless for visitors or people who just need to get on for an hour because, oh, they're sitting in the Brookline High School auditorium.

Jeff Egnaczyk is on the 7:40 train out of Back Bay. Come in, Jeff, can you hear us?

I only have two bars. I'm thinking the WiFi is in another car. It's kind of slow. I think I'm in Newton right now.