A while back, Boris expressed his hopes that we’d all be able to use Wi-fi on the underground by the time the Olympics rolled around. Then there was the temporary BT Openzone trial at Charing Cross. But this time it’s different. This time it’s voice calls.
Huawei is offering to install a mobile network worth £50m on the underground, which will mean we can all make calls when on the tube. The signal would be fitted via transmitters on the ceilings of underground tunnels, and Huawei would profit from charging for maintenance work.
Lots of London residents feel pretty strongly about having a mobile phone signal on the tube. For many commuters, its a welcome respite from the eternal inbox ping. Folks who work long hours can know that they are legitimately inaccessible for the short tube ride it takes them to get home, or to their nearest railway station.
Wi-fi is one thing, but voice calls is a completely different ball game. Currently, an accepted silence is commonplace on the tube: tourists stick out because they’re (shock-horror!) having conversations. Add voice calls to the tube, and we’ll all be being anti social in louder, more disruptive ways. Imagine your tube ride home was accompanied by the sounds of all the loud conversations London can offer, from City bankers doing deals shouting at harangued PA’s, to rude girls with too many free minutes.
Vodafone and O2 have piped up, and agreed to pay for the installation work. If all goes to plan, and there’s a signature on the bottom line, then we could all be yelling into our phones in just over a year.
At the risk of alienating our non-London based readers, we want to know from any London residents reading Electricpig: Do you want a mobile network on the tube? Click and tell…
the response options are slightly irrelevant in my opinion, give that in a couple of years time (and already now) “data” access automatically gives you the ability to make voice calls anyway, e.g. with Skype and other VoIP services. So I'm afraid there won't be an option to give people data access without having them making calls…
A while back, Boris expressed his hopes that we’d all be able to use Wi-fi on the underground by the time the Olympics rolled around. Then there was the temporary BT Openzone trial at Charing Cross. But this time it’s different. This time it’s voice calls.
