Hanging up on mobile phone plans for the Tube
Post categories: City Hall, Transport for London
|20:53 UK time, Thursday, 31 March 2011
All alone on the Tube? You can't even phone a friend for company
You always got the sense when you spoke to City Hall that it was a long way off. Well it is now.
You won't be able to use your mobiles on the Tube for the foreseeable future.
The Mayor's office and mobile operators had been in talks for some time but it has come to nothing.
The Mayor, Boris Johnson, wanted the mobile companies to pay. So either that was a stumbling block or the technical reasons were a problem.
It would have been quite a feat installing relay stations in a tunnel as well as an upgrade programme going on.
Either way it looks like the future of communication underground is now wi-fi.
Wi-fi is cheaper, easier and perhaps, some would say, more practical.
Thoughts?
Follow me on Twitter: @TomSEwards
Comment number 1.
At 03:22 1st Apr 2011, Bob wrote:Why is it so important for people to use a mobile phone while travelling. It is bad enough when driving but why on the tubes when underground. It is going to be very costly for the tubes to make it possible while below the ground surface to use mobiles. People when then complain about the higher costs due to this unnecessary needs. Come on Brits lets be realistic - when has it been so important to make calls when travelling. Before mobile phones existed we survived by reading the newspaper when travelling - what is wrong with that !!!!!
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Comment number 2.
At 07:52 1st Apr 2011, Inkelectric wrote:The nation is split in two: (1) those who happily shout into their mobile phones in public, oblivious to the irritation this causes to others; and (2) the unoblivious and suffering others. What we really need on the Tube is the unleashing of this social pestilence, isn't it? Although it is often inconvenient not to be able to send and receive messages when travelling to meet others, during a Tube journey, this is a mere fleabite compared with the searing pain and anguish that will result if the shouting party is permitted to expand its area of operation underground.
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Comment number 3.
At 10:07 1st Apr 2011, Kit Green wrote:It makes a change for what is right to prevail over business interests, especially when it is because what is wrong is too expensive.
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Comment number 4.
At 11:12 1st Apr 2011, geofftech wrote:Skype calls then, from the platform?
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