EE UK Joins 4G Mobile Pilot on the London Underground Network
As expected EE (BT) has today announced that they will next year be joining O2, Vodafone and Transport for London (TfL) to help pilot a new 4G (mobile broadband and voice) network through tunnels and at station platforms on the London Underground (tube trains).
The TfL project was first officially announced in July 2019 (here) and aims to make 4G services available across the whole of their London Underground (tube trains) network by the “mid-2020s“, although initially this will only take the form of a limited pilot along the Jubilee Line between Canning Town and Westminster stations (once the bugs have been worked out they’ll extend it).
At the same time hundreds of miles of new fibre optic cabling will also be installed alongside, which is part of a range of measures from London Mayor Sadiq Khan to boost digital connectivity across the capital (here). The pilot is due to begin in March 2020 and procurement for a concessionaire agreement to facilitate 4G connectivity across the whole of the underground network could be ready by Summer 2020.
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Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Division, said:
“We are delighted to formally join the TfL 4G on the Underground trial, connecting our customers between Westminster and Canning Town. This trial is the start of a huge step forward for London.”
End.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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@matthew
Absolutely, The sooner WiFi is junked on public transport and the 4 Networks enabled the better: the big
reason is you just can’t readily use it as you naturally would wether because it is just too clunky and cumbrous or because
the browser says “NOT SECURE”. Nor do I find the extraordinary expectation that anyone even an advanced specialist of
a contract lawyer could possible be sure there is nothing in some careful words you are are by legal convention deemed
to have fully understood before you press enter.
As a distress purchase avaiiable in extremis one might not object to WiFi being available but it can hardly between the
awkwardness and the insecurity expect it too be commercially successful. I an so glad that Tfl evidently see its crippling
limitations.
privacy invading and snooping TFL decided to track everyone using their wifi network by logging unique phone data per handset… they claim it’s to help them ‘improve’ service (lol yeah right!).
how will the phone data etc be kept private, as we cannot trust TFL not to track users… this creepy data collection needs to be looked into before people use these services