The company rolling out mobile phone coverage on the London Underground has signed its first two commercial contracts, with Three and EE. Although Wi-Fi coverage is available in the stations for all networks except Vodafone, and mobile coverage is available on all networks along the length of the Jubilee line extension, that was a pilot installation carried out by London Underground to test the service.Earlier this year, a 20-year commercial contract was signed with BAI Communications to extend that to the rest of the London Underground, and they need to sign new contracts with the mobile networks to provide phone services in the extended network.
Installation work at some of London’s busiest stations, including Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Bank, Euston and Camden Town is currently underway for launch later in 2022.
They’ve now signed up Three and EE as their first customers. That leaves Vodafone and O2 to sign up, and in a related statement this morning, Vodafone said that “negotiations have progressed well, and we expect to sign up with BAI next month”.
I’ve updated this post to the IanVisits article which has more details on the other Underground wireless providers.
Hopefully this and other upgrades will be useful in drawing passengers back to the underground over the next few years.
I find it hard to believe many people are avoiding the Underground because they won’t be able to use their phone for a few minutes, though maybe I’m unusual. I’m also struggling to see what return the mobile phone networks get from this; with so many users on unlimited calls they don’t get more revenue even if people use their phones for longer. It does look as though they’re almost being blackmailed into signing up in case customers defect to another network that does work underground.
My operator doesn’t sign up to the station wifi system. I hope they might sign up to the 4G system. When I had access to wifi – different operator – it was useful to check, for example, that my main line train was running and, if time were tight, from which platform it will leave. Personally, i think anyone using the system for voice calls will find the background noise levels something of a hindrance!