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Time to move Internet into the Underground...

"It took at least 20 minutes before control centre staff realised last Thursday's Tube chaos was due to a terror attack." Of course it did! - nobody could tell them. That's because London Underground is, still, dragging its feet on allowing the wireless Internet to penetrate underground.

The victims knew it was a bomb. But they couldn't tell anybody.

If this had been Hong Kong, or Singapore, or Taipei, or any of a dozen so-called "third world" cities, the calls, pictures and blogs would have been on the Web before the rescuers had even slid down their greasy poles.

Today, NewsWireless can reveal that the absence of wireless on London's internal rail system is not caused by technology problems, but by reactionary opposition, with station managers holding the central management hostage.

Third World rail systems can put wireless into the tunnels. But this is London, where we can't even hope for a "revitalisation" of the transport system until the next Olympic Games but one.

If the Underground were a city in Britain, the 200,000 people living in it during rush hour would make it bigger than the "average British town". And if a town the size of Reading were to be completely isolated from mobile phone access, it would be not just astonishing, but a scandal.

Where else, in this country, can you find yourself unable to dial 999 to report a serious incident? Where else, if there are delays, are you utterly isolated, unable to tell anybody where you are, or what has happened?

And yet, if you raise the subject, people seem to think it's rather funny. "Oh, no: 'I'M ON THE TUBE!' Hahahaha!" they bray, as if auditioning for a part in Big Brother.

But a report in London's evening newspaper, the Evening Standard, claims they were shown copies of the official log for the Tube. "This shows that staff at the Tube's Network Control Centre thought there had been four separate accidents," writes transport editor, Dick Murray, in the Tuesday edition. "Exactly why staff at the NCC did not realise earlier that a terrorist attack had taken place, will be the subject of an inquiry involving London Underground, and the police," he concluded.

But the only plans the LU authorities have to extend the internet to the underground, involve making money

Why does the rail network lag the rest of the world?

Official queries to LU over the last year haven't received any answer. Unofficial sources, however, have been pretty explicit: "Nobody wants to be the person who authorised it."

One contractor who works for the Underground said: "Ever since the Kings Cross fire, everybody has known that there is no safety threat involved in using mobile phones or WLAN technology underground - but there's a climate of "pass the buck" which means nobody is prepared to make it happen."

Another source said: "Station managers have virtually held a gun to central management's head. There are old bits and bobs of electronics down there, and in many cases, only the local station manager knows what they are, and what they do. The central management asked them to guarantee that they would carry on working if we put phone signals there, and they simply won't."

In some cases, their nervousness is genuine caution, based on the fact that of course, there can be no guarantees. But in many cases, said one source, "it's simply a way of clinging to power, for people who feel that if they give up this sort of leverage, they'll be made redundant."

That there is no danger, is clear. Of the 200,000 passengers boiling in the tunnels each rush hour, virtually none switches their phone off during the journey. If the phone signals were capable of jamming other equipment, it would have happened, years ago.

And in parts of the underground, there are gaps in the tunnel where signals can get through - for example, on the District and Circle line between Kensington and Blackfriars, people often have quite long conversations. But no equipment seizes up, and no riots start.

As I observed in another place, in an emergency, a hundred people with mobile phones can out-do the world's media in getting across what's going on.

To put wireless underground isn't a huge technology challenge. It's been done, many times.

It could be done, on a temporary basis, perhaps, by virtual amateurs. A mesh of cheap PCs would get the Internet into the stations; GSM picocells plugged into that network would feed phone signals to users - and picocells can even be put onto the trains themselves, as Virgin Trains and Broadreach Networks have proved above ground.

If someone wanted to provide the service, rather than drag their heels, it could be done in weeks. And if someone wanted to do it cheaply, rather than create a gravy train underground, they could.

There will be another major emergency Underground. Never mind the everyday tragedies, of people who are intimidated by "steaming" gangs, and can't call for help; or women trapped in a carriage with sexual predators - not just one or two every year, either.Let's just say they don't count. Let's look forward to the next derailment, the next terror bomb, the next fire. Can we prevent these things? Of course not! It will happen.

It may not be this year; and it may not be in 2006, either. But I bet anything you like, nobody has provided wireless access for the suffocating passengers by the next time the blackened, wounded faces start coming up the stairs, and trying to get out of the locked gates...