News

Mobiles everywhere - but "never on the London Underground."

Cowardice, greed, and office politics inside the London Underground "means that mobile phones will never work on the Tube," a well-placed source has told NewsWireless.

The only hope for change lies with Government legislation, this source says, after Transport for London admitted it has abandoned mobile phone trials as "too expensive."

The technicalities of extending mobile coverage to the world's oldest underground commuter system are not the problem, said our source.

"First, there is a culture of greedy labour relations, where management and workers are both prepared to wait for ever rather than see the other side gain an apparent advantage," said this source, who has worked on several feasibility studies over the last decade.

"Next, there is a climate of fear amongst Underground engineers. They believe the inclusion of wireless transceivers would have no bad effects on the safe running of trains. "But after the great Kings Cross underground fire, no engineer is prepared to be the one to put his name to a definitive statement - just in case there is some random factor they couldn't foresee."

Nearly all the underground rail systems in most of the world's big cities now permit commuters to talk and send texts while riding the tunnels. But there are black boxes inside the London Tube which perform historic tasks, the details of which are known only to the station managers who maintain them, said our source.

"There's a lot of office politics underground," he said. "There are managers who fear that they may be replaced, and who have built some of these old electrical switches into a legend, and they literally refuse to say what they do, or how they are kept going - but claim that wireless interference might cause malfunctions."

But the main problem is that too many people in the mobile industry think they can turn the Underground into a gold mine.

"The project has been abandoned yet again, after trials. But it isn't because (as TfL says) it can't be done profitably; it's because potential contractors have refused to take on the job unless they have exclusive revenue sharing arrangements, with huge fees."

Our source believes that a "Singapore Law" is the only way of breaking the deadlock.

"In the city-state on the island of Singapore, there is a law requiring that mobile phone signals must not be blocked from any space. If you create a space which blocks signals, you must provide the means to extend the network into that space - and so even underground car parks many levels down have a clear signal."

Without legislation enabling such mandatory coverage, our source believes, phones will never work on the Tube, since nobody is prepared to "take ownership" of the problem.

Our source refuses to identify himself on the grounds that he works for a company which would lose contracts if it were seen to criticise TfL bosses.