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How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
- bildabearg 9mo ago[flagged]
- dfajgljsldkjag 9mo agoI had assumed the delay was technical but it turns out it was mostly about finding a business model that worked for everyone. It is good they finally settled on a shared infrastructure approach so they do not have to crowd the tunnels with extra equipment.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dbish 9mo agoPretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
- lostlogin 9mo agoIt’s a tough choice, is it worse to hear their phone calls, or hear 2 seconds of every bit of TikTok/Instagram feed trash. Either way, no cellular access seems a plus.
- throw567643u8 9mo agoHonestly I'd prefer to listen to phone calls over brainless reels. Both are hell.
- esperent 9mo agoNot to excuse other people's behavior but buying a decent pair of noise canceling headphones or earbuds will make putting up with it a whole lot easier. You don't even have to listen to anything, or you can put rain noises and thunderstorms. It's as much better soundscape than public transport.
- buckle8017 9mo agoNoise cancelling headphones on NYC public transit is insanity.
- TheFuzzball 9mo agoWhy?
- dbish 9mo agoYou want to be aware of your surroundings.
- lxgr 9mo agoNo, riding the Subway without noise canceling headphones is. The track screeching is something else.
- hexbin010 9mo agoThat also creates a problem that people then can not hear important announcements or be aware of dangers (such as knife wielding attackers, as happened on an LNER train just late last year)
- wolvoleo 9mo agoYou can still hear those things, just not obnoxiously loudly. NC works best against static sounds. Speech still makes it through. Just not as loud. If you're in a busy car enough people will hear it to be aware, and if you're on your own you will hear the announcement clearly. Besides it's really a one in 10 million chance you'll get stabbed on the metro, not worth worrying about. The chance of getting hit by a car in traffic is much higher. That feeling of always being in some kind of danger seems to be very American, I never really see that in people here in Europe. I think it's the sensationalism in the press there, every little incident is blown up to massive "BREAKING NEWS!" proportions.
- 9mo ago
- edent 9mo agoWhy is your need for silence more important than other people's need to communicate?
- Retric 9mo agoNeither of those things are needs, it’s just wants and preferring your own wants over others is completely normal. Imagine trying to live your life where other people’s desires by default overrode you own.
- userbinator 9mo agoImagine trying to live your life where other people’s desires by default overrode you own. Unfortunately that happens a lot; it's called the government.
- trueismywork 9mo agoCollective vs individuals desires
- immibis 9mo agoCollectivism killed hundreds of millions of people, so I'll take individualism thanks.
- nanna 9mo agoBecause silence is a common good, like clean air. It's everyone's. When people fill it with their noise they effectively privatize it for the duration. When they shout on speakerphone or play their music or blare sound from their apps it's especially selfish.
- hexbin010 9mo agoIt's actually against byelaws to play music or other loud sounds on transport in London and they can prosecute you if they so wished... It's about acknowledging it's a shared resource and respecting the space. No loud noises, no littering, no being drunk etc These days people act like they're the only ones travelling
- wolvoleo 9mo agoWho still calls anyway? Literally all my friends exclusively message now (on WhatsApp). It would be really annoying if I were out of touch for the whole duration of subway trips. But in my city it works great. Here the 3 main providers pooled together and shared the installation.
- throw567643u8 9mo agoOne or two people per carriage/bus.
- kergonath 9mo ago> Literally all my friends exclusively message now (on WhatsApp). An annoyingly large number of them send audio messages. It’s worse for everyone involved.
- throw567643u8 9mo agoThis behaviour is so bad on London (above ground) trains, if they ever do 'crack it' and roll out mobile signal to the Underground, those tiny carriages will be unbearable.
- p10jkle 9mo agoThere already is signal on many underground lines, and it’s pretty rare that people are playing things out loud in my experience?
- hereonout2 9mo agoIt's because phones speakers aren't loud enough to be audible over the sound of the tube itself! It is noticeable on buses and overground when people play things out load, but to be honest quite rare in the grand scheme of things.
- LightBug1 9mo agoThat's true. I made several complaints about that to TFL before capitulating and just settling for noise-cancelling headphones. Never been happier. The clincher was noticing that the drivers themselves had access to ear defenders ... TFL said that that's because they're down there for extended periods of time. Sounds reasonable but I'm not buying that as a way out of not fixing the issue and exposing my ears to the worst bits of the tube. Also has the ancillary benefits of blocking out those rare times (for me) when people do have their phone on speaker or are having a chat I'm uninterested in.
- fennecbutt 9mo agoWelcome to the UK where citizens are so apathetic they don't care about aging infrastructure or government money being siphoned away.
- throw567643u8 9mo agoMy daily train to/from London Bridge to West Croydon is borderline unbearable.
- RicoElectrico 9mo agoSomehow even though there's great cell coverage in Warsaw metro people aren't being obnoxious with it.
- pajamasam 9mo agoSame in Munich
- cm2187 9mo agoThe worst is not calls, it is the thousands of zombies hooked up on tiktok 24/7, of course with headphones, so completely unaware and indifferent to their environment, who block tunnels, escalators, turnstiles, etc.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoIn the 90s we read the paper and dumbed with our magnetic tickets. In the 00s we listened to MP3s while playing snake on an oyster. In the 10s we played Andy birds and listened to iTunes with a credit card at the turnstile. In the 20s we doom scroll and listen to Spotify while tapping out with our phone. I don’t see the issue.
- cm2187 9mo agoAll of that that they did while they sit. I don’t remember people reading the newspapers while slow walking in the middle of a corridor. And the problem with headphones is that they make people unaware of their surrounding, alone in the world, and therefore for instance unaware that there is someone on their left that they will cut the way to. Small incivilities, but repeat several times a day every day and it gets seriously annoying.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoCertainly people would do that. And sending text messages in the 00s. People have been wearing headphones while commuting for a generation, and (not on the underground but certainly on trains) people in the 80s and 90s were far more obnoxious - get stuck on a busy train between people having conversations about inane stuff while smoking. Public transport is far better today than it was 30 years ago, annoyances are far less than they were.
- traceroute66 9mo ago> Public transport is far better today than it was 30 years ago One exception. Give me the Routemaster bus back. The real ones, not the Boris ones. Those who know, know. ;)
- rhubarbtree 9mo agoWhat is the thing with people using phones without headphones? And making calls on public transport? When did that become a thing? It’s the most obnoxious selfish behaviour and it shocks me every time. It’s not just Gen Z either, I’ve seen a few boomers do it and even a couple of millennials.
- youngtaff 9mo agoTen of so years ago I was on a train and the women opposite me gave all her credit card details to someone over the phone — anyone close by could have had fun with them
- master-lincoln 9mo agoIs that still a thing in the USA that you can buy with just a credit card number, validity date, name and 3 digit code? In the EU we have psd2 mandating a second factor. Usually an app where the transaction has to be confirmed.
- gorfian_robot 9mo agoYep. the US has always been behind on this bc both the card companies and the merchants are loath to spend an extra .01% to implement better security. Apple Pay on mac is the best we got. Looking forward to getting a new mac this year in part just for that.
- youngtaff 9mo agoThis was in the UK, before 2FA was more common for Cardholders not Present transactions
- drnick1 9mo agoThe second factor is a true annoyance, especially because in Europe it tends to be an "app" that requires iOS or Google-certified phones.
- kotaKat 9mo agoBad News! They already ruined that one. https://www.boldyn.com/us/news/at-t-and-boldyn-networks-bring-cellular-service-to-the-mtas-joralemon-street-tunnel https://www.boldyn.com/us/news/at-t-and-boldyn-networks-brin...
- Tsiklon 9mo agoFrom looking at the WiFi ssid’s broadcast at the New York subway stations, I believe Boldyn also does the phone coverage here too
- dotBen 9mo agoOne of the frustrating things about international roaming in the UK is typically your plan does not include coverage on this neutral network on the underground
- Brajeshwar 9mo agoDid the UK stop people from just picking up a cheap SIM at the Airport? I always like a local number when traveling. Anyway, Indian Roaming plans are so cheap these days that it's much easier and cheaper to just subscribe to them as part of the plan. These days, I don’t even need to add/activate it or anything, the providers turn it ON when I start my phone outside India and turn it off when I re-activate back in India.
- Symbiote 9mo agoI think I saw vending machines with SIM cards recently in Heathrow airport.
- inlustra 9mo agoSource? As someone that comes back to London every month, I’ve been able to roam the same as anywhere else in the UK. I’d be shocked if this were true.
- mgaunard 9mo agoThe main problem if you're roaming is that you're considered a lower-priority customer, and since the network is often saturated already, you don't get any bandwidth.
- mikelward 9mo agoI don't think that's correct. With the old WiFi networks (Virgin, Vodafone WiFi, etc.), yes. With the new 4G+5G coverage, you can access that the same as you access above ground coverage.
- kalleboo 9mo agoI was thinking it could be a radio band issue? I had a fun situation when I had friends visiting me in Japan for a road trip. One friend's US-model Android phone didn't support the specific low bands used for sparse coverage in rural Japan, but the repeaters inside of the tunnels were all on standard 2100 MHz, so whenever we drove through a tunnel he rushed to his phone to get some messages through. Kind of the opposite to what you usually experience with loss of signal in tunnels :)
- matham 9mo agoI'm having a really hard reading this. Not only are the paragraphs are so short, they each feel like part of a uncompleted thought. The content doesn't feel AI generated, but maybe it is? I read somewhere that short paragraphs is an AI signature!?
- Animats 9mo agoThis is the new system for emergency communications? TfL just finished up an upgrade on that in 2021. That upgrade was built by Thales.[1] That system is purely for operational use, and is not cell phone compatible. It's compatible with the gear cops and fire brigades use. Is it being replaced? As late as 2018, the classic century-old system, with two bare wires on insulators on the tunnel walls, was still maintained.[2] Clipping a telephone handset to the two wires would connect to a dispatcher, and the wires were placed so that reaching out of the driver's cab to do this was possible. In addition, squeezing the wires together by hand would trip a relay and cut traction power. Is that still operational? The 2011 replacement was ISDN. [1] https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/news-centre/press-releases/thales-performs-critical-refresh-london-undergrounds-communications https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/news-centre/press-releases/th... [2] https://www.railengineer.co.uk/communications-on-the-central-line/ https://www.railengineer.co.uk/communications-on-the-central...
- inshard 9mo agoThe Paris metro figured this out perfectly way back in 2021 - full bars, 5G.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- edent 9mo agoThe Paris metro is mostly cut-and-cover. It isn't very deep. The deepest tube lines are around 60m underground.
- redleader55 9mo agoAre you suggesting the mobile signal comes from above the ground in Paris?
- edent 9mo agoNo. I'm suggesting it is easier and cheaper to retrofit equipment. Not to mention dealing with the extra heat.
- ViewTrick1002 9mo agoPulling the cables down the service shafts from the surface is not the hard part either way. Stockholm has had 3g in the entire subway system since 2005. Which has then been continuously upgraded. With some very deep lines.
- FridayoLeary 9mo ago>There’s another distance limit at work here, and that is the speed of light. It takes milliseconds for the signal in your phone to reach the hotel above ground and be handed over to the mobile network. But if it takes too long to get from phone to hotel, then your phone call s..a.rt..s..t o. br..e..ak up. As it happens, that distance is about 12km, so Boldyn needs nine hotels around London to cover the whole of the Underground I find that interesting. Another fascinating rabbit hole the article has sent me down is that there is an unused station called north end. I've been down that stretch before and i had no idea. Does anyone know if passengers can see it?
- TheOtherHobbes 9mo agoThere's a small surface building that doesn't look like a station, platforms are visible if you're paying attention, and it can be used for emergency evacuations.
- FridayoLeary 9mo agowhat's the address of the building?
- alexfoo 9mo agohttps://maps.app.goo.gl/YpywKrJC4at2RwHy7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/YpywKrJC4at2RwHy7 I found the coordinates on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_End_tube_station https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_End_tube_station (the link is up in the top right above the photo). Doesn't appear on this list though (unless it had another name): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_London_Underground_stations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_and_unopened_Lo...
- zith 9mo agoInteresting! I know Sweden was not first, but Stockholm has had 3g coverage in the subway since 2005 and 4g since 2016.
- justincormack 9mo agoLots of countries do where the underground is near the surface, but London it is very deep.
- zulln 9mo agoQuick googling gave that Stockholm is deeper on average, although the deepest point of London metro is currently deeper than Stockholm. No drastical differences that should affect this question I think. (This will change when they are done with Sofia station, a new station in Stockholm that they are building 100 m below the surface.)
- hexbin010 9mo agoHow London enabled TikTok addicts to annoy other passengers
- testdelacc1 9mo agoAs a resident with a phone problem I miss the underground not having any signal. Other people using TikTok doesn’t bother me so much because it’s relatively rare. My own tendencies with screen time bother me more. No internet actually forced me to read books more and I miss that. But this is a lot better for tourists who need the internet to navigate underground. So I’m pleased for them.
- userbinator 9mo agoI wonder if they considered using the existing metal tracks as antennae, or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_line_communication to feed base stations in the trains themselves. So the ESN in the tunnels runs at 400 MHz, far lower than the 700 to 3,600 MHz range usually used by smartphones. It's worth noting that 450MHz was listed as one of the GSM bands, but apparently was never used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands#GSM-450 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands#GSM-450
- wolvoleo 9mo agoWeird because very few phones have that band. Requires much larger antennas. Twice as long as for 800Mhz. Edit: ah I see why, this is exclusively about the Emergency Services network, not for regular phones. In that sense it seems a bit similar to GSM-R used by the railways here.
- fundatus 9mo ago> It's worth noting that 450MHz was listed as one of the GSM bands, but apparently was never used It's specified for 4G/LTE (Band 31, 72 & 73) and 5G (Band n31 & n72) as well! The bandwidth is pretty low though at just 5 MHz, but it's used for special purpose stuff like electricity meters. I'm not aware of any consumer devices that use this frequency.
- celsoazevedo 9mo agoI think that part of the article is wrong. The old radio system apparently uses ~400 MHz, but ESN seems to use the same/similar bands as mobile services (700 MHz and above).
- iLoveOncall 9mo agoAnyone who lives in London knows that phone coverage on the Tube is anything but "cracked".
- saulr 9mo agoJust to add a piece of data to support this: > It turns out the phone signal inside the station can be better than the one above ground I was surprised when I noticed I had 5G in the tunnel, ran a speed test and hit 641Mbps down! https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/6831252952 https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/6831252952
- SecondHandTofu 9mo agoLike many of London's woes, that's because of planning, councils have to approve infrastructure and block it: https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-phone-signal https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-pho... I'd say it's developing-world tier, but a lot of the developing world has really good 5G signal these days.
- hdgvhicv 9mo agoDuring Covid people were attacking engineering laying fibre because it was “5g”, and facebook had told them 5g caused Covid.
- mgaunard 9mo agotl;dr people reject installing ugly masts in densely urbanised neighbourhoods, meaning there often isn't enough capacity for everyone to get fast 5G.
- dgxyz 9mo agoThere are also some absolute morons out there. Couple of local things around me... First I went to one of the local town planning meetings in my area when they were rolling out FTTC. This one was due to a rather old person objecting to the placement of a streetside box which was not even outside her property and no one who it would have affected could see it or cared about it. I raised my objections about her being a NIMBY old fart and was asked to leave. She single-handedly blocked it for 5 years due to council connections. She dropped dead. Stuck on 20 meg ADSL until that happened. Second, they built a 5g mast put didn't put any equipment in it and left it 3 months. Several local threads on Facebook from the tweakers about how it was causing all sorts of completely unrelated problems from tinnitus to covid to mind control. Then someone burned it. There is still no equipment in the cabinet or mast today, nearly 4 years on. No one got 5g.
- bede 9mo ago> There’s another distance limit at work here, and that is the speed of light. It takes milliseconds for the signal in your phone to reach the hotel above ground and be handed over to the mobile network. It takes roughly 100us for light to travel 30km – Can you explain how the speed of light is relevant here?
- mianos 9mo ago.. and in 1mS it travels 300km. Maybe they just want to sound technical, somewhat to match the rest of the article. They certainly didn't use chat gpt, so maybe that's a good thing.
- cagz 9mo agoI use the underground frequently. It doesn't really feel like half of it is covered. Where it is available, it works amazingly. I might have been using the other half by sheer luck.
- chatmasta 9mo agoI find it works pretty well, at least that I’m consistently surprised I have any signal at all. Sometimes I need to disable private relay to get it to work with all the switchovers. There’s also frequent swapping between the 5G signal and the Wi-Fi that comes auto-enabled on my phone by my carrier who provides a client certificate entitling me to it. I’m not sure about the privacy implications of this whole setup. It’s basically turned the underground into a surveillance dragnet that can hoover up all sorts of interesting metadata… hostnames, hardware identifiers, traveling patterns, DNS queries, SNI requests… and an untold amount of unencrypted communications across weird protocols and devices..
- cedws 9mo agoDefinitely not. Try it in Tokyo, every single line, every single station has high speed coverage. I can’t recall signal ever dropping out for me.
- Havoc 9mo agoLondon’s first line predates tokyos by like 60 years and was literally the test ground for how to make underground’s The challenge isn’t the technology but rather the environment you’re trying to retrofit
- cedws 9mo agoThat's the standard excuse but it's the same on the Elizabeth line which was commissioned only a few years ago.
- mft_ 9mo agoSo if I follow, you’re saying that because London’s underground is older than Tokyo’s, it somehow changes the physical environment of the tunnels or their surroundings such that installing the required technology is more difficult? Please expand…
- Symbiote 9mo agoThe tunnels are particularly narrow and lived with iron rings. There's less space for adding equipment.
- TheOtherHobbes 9mo agoThere is very limited clearance inside the tunnels, and a lot of electrical noise from existing systems.
- Havoc 9mo agoYou’ve not been in London’s deep underground lines I take it? Some of the tunnels are so ancient and cramped that tall people can’t stand straight in most of the carriages. As the article says there just isn’t space to add equipment. Same reason they’re struggling to add air conditioning to older lines - no clearance The recently built lines had 5G etc from the start. It’s not difficult when the environment isn’t constraining you. Even malls add indoor 5g these days
- timthorn 9mo agoAre the dual redundant leaky feeders configured to act as a MIMO array?
- egao1980 9mo ago[dead]
- DrBazza 9mo agoI'm old enough to remember the first attempt at 'mobile underground'. Maybe I've forgotten the name but it was something like BT Phone Zone, though google returns zero relevant results, so perhaps it was called something else. In lieu of public call boxes, BT trialled a base station that was installed in some tube stations (almost certainly Oxford St and Tottenham Court Rd), and with the correct 'wireless handset' as long as you were within 10 feet of it, or thereabouts, you could make a call. I'm sure I remember a semi-circle painted on the ground that if you stood in, you were in range.
- timthorn 9mo agoYou might be thinking of Rabbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_%28telecommunications%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_%28telecommunications%2...
- DrBazza 9mo agoYeah, I think that's it. Thanks.
- kotaKat 9mo agoWas it a Rabbit Telepoint, perchance? https://www.engagingwithcommunications.com/publications/THG_Papers/Telepoint/telepoint.html https://www.engagingwithcommunications.com/publications/THG_...
- DrBazza 9mo agoYes, looks like it. I see it was licensed to a few other companies.
- mark_undoio 9mo agoWhilst I have seen the Rabbit fittings others have mentioned I do remember mention of a "zone phone" and suspect we're recalling the same thing...
- 9mo ago
- joelkoen 9mo ago> What happens if a train has to stop in the middle of the tunnel, and you phone for help? [...] the system has been deliberately configured to transmit the location of the nearest tube station, where access can be arranged. That’s why sometimes you might check your smartphone map, and it will display the “wrong” location, because that’s the best one for a 999 call to use. This doesn't seem correct - cell towers don't just transmit a location that phones then pickup and use? Unless this is some emergency specific feature I'm not aware of?
- bobmcnamara 9mo ago> This doesn't seem correct - cell towers don't just transmit a location that phones then pickup and use? I think it works like this: Towers transmit location. If the phone has no other source of location data, it'll fall back to "probably within radio range of this only tower I can hear"
- corimaith 9mo agoThey didn't. In the Bakerloo line there is no coverage save for wifi on stations, not on tracks.
- knorker 9mo agoIt makes me sick to see London bragging about this. This is last century technology, and other cities managed to retrofit this just fine, including of course using leaky cable in the tunnels. That it took 20-30 years longer than everyone else is through absolute incompetence and mismanagement. It would have been in place at least 10 years ago if they hadn't screwed up the RFP that Huawei won. And it's not even shared infra! Vodafone is WAY behind the other networks. I have worked with these things. There's no valid excuse for being 20-30 years behind on this. And it's still not landed! By the time it finally gets to all stations I wouldn't be surprised if it's 40-50 years behind everyone else.
- everfrustrated 9mo agoThe actual reason it took so long was TFL wanted to rent this to a mobile network to create revenue for themselves. It wasn't enough to be cost-neutral it had to make them money.
- knorker 9mo agoWell the Huawei winning scandal appeared to be real. But also, I wouldn't be surprised. In any case, as I said I have actual expertise in this area, and exactly none of being 20-50 years late has any technical reasons. I'm not surprised if there the layers of incompetence go deeper and include what you said.
- ChrisMarshallNY 9mo agoIn Japan, mobile works everywhere. Not exactly sure how they do it, but you could use phones on trains, last century.
- teleforce 9mo ago> In Japan, mobile works everywhere Yes Japan has the best mobile wireless coverage bar none, but not everywhere. Based on my experiences there's significant blind spot of mobile wireless coverage along the way from Fukuoka station to Iizuka. Thanks to the OP excellent article.