> It turns out the phone signal inside the station can be better than the one above ground
I was surprised when I noticed I had 5G in the tunnel, ran a speed test and hit 641Mbps down!
(Circumstantial evidence is that a particularly extra nice part of central London has no tube station, ostensibly to keep the riff-raff out, and is the only area with a proposed station on Crossrail 2 that voted against having a new station!)
Going from £70/mo for gigabit to £65/mo for 500mb is insulting.
I'd say it's developing-world tier, but a lot of the developing world has really good 5G signal these days.
First I went to one of the local town planning meetings in my area when they were rolling out FTTC. This one was due to a rather old person objecting to the placement of a streetside box which was not even outside her property and no one who it would have affected could see it or cared about it. I raised my objections about her being a NIMBY old fart and was asked to leave. She single-handedly blocked it for 5 years due to council connections. She dropped dead. Stuck on 20 meg ADSL until that happened.
Second, they built a 5g mast put didn't put any equipment in it and left it 3 months. Several local threads on Facebook from the tweakers about how it was causing all sorts of completely unrelated problems from tinnitus to covid to mind control. Then someone burned it. There is still no equipment in the cabinet or mast today, nearly 4 years on. No one got 5g.
Reminds me of this infamous decade-old story:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161010203002/http://mybroadban...
Except in the good old days things just got done when there was demand for them and NIMBYs were told to fuck off.
They also have a much bigger population using exclusively mobiles rather than landlines, since their infrastructure developed when the former was already available, and it's cheaper to just put up a few towers than run one landline to each subscriber.
I don’t see the issue.
It would be really annoying if I were out of touch for the whole duration of subway trips. But in my city it works great. Here the 3 main providers pooled together and shared the installation.
Sorry, nonsense. I use the tube several times a day and it's a real rarity.
I do worry about the tube becoming a cacophony of phone calls, but really? Everyone message now anyway so I reckon that'll be a rarity too.
It is noticeable on buses and overground when people play things out load, but to be honest quite rare in the grand scheme of things.
Never been happier.
The clincher was noticing that the drivers themselves had access to ear defenders ... TFL said that that's because they're down there for extended periods of time. Sounds reasonable but I'm not buying that as a way out of not fixing the issue and exposing my ears to the worst bits of the tube.
Also has the ancillary benefits of blocking out those rare times (for me) when people do have their phone on speaker or are having a chat I'm uninterested in.
It’s not just Gen Z either, I’ve seen a few boomers do it and even a couple of millennials.
Imagine trying to live your life where other people’s desires by default overrode you own.
Unfortunately that happens a lot; it's called the government.
It's about acknowledging it's a shared resource and respecting the space. No loud noises, no littering, no being drunk etc
These days people act like they're the only ones travelling
In classic British style they just try to influence and nudge people with campaigns and posters. That way the organisation doesn't have to deal with awkward accusations of racism etc
Don't be a douche.
If you're in a busy car enough people will hear it to be aware, and if you're on your own you will hear the announcement clearly.
Besides it's really a one in 10 million chance you'll get stabbed on the metro, not worth worrying about. The chance of getting hit by a car in traffic is much higher. That feeling of always being in some kind of danger seems to be very American, I never really see that in people here in Europe. I think it's the sensationalism in the press there, every little incident is blown up to massive "BREAKING NEWS!" proportions.
So the ESN in the tunnels runs at 400 MHz, far lower than the 700 to 3,600 MHz range usually used by smartphones.
It's worth noting that 450MHz was listed as one of the GSM bands, but apparently was never used: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_frequency_bands#GSM-450
Edit: ah I see why, this is exclusively about the Emergency Services network, not for regular phones.
In that sense it seems a bit similar to GSM-R used by the railways here.
As late as 2018, the classic century-old system, with two bare wires on insulators on the tunnel walls, was still maintained.[2] Clipping a telephone handset to the two wires would connect to a dispatcher, and the wires were placed so that reaching out of the driver's cab to do this was possible. In addition, squeezing the wires together by hand would trip a relay and cut traction power. Is that still operational? The 2011 replacement was ISDN.
[1] https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/news-centre/press-releases/th...
[2] https://www.railengineer.co.uk/communications-on-the-central...
The content doesn't feel AI generated, but maybe it is? I read somewhere that short paragraphs is an AI signature!?
I had a fun situation when I had friends visiting me in Japan for a road trip. One friend's US-model Android phone didn't support the specific low bands used for sparse coverage in rural Japan, but the repeaters inside of the tunnels were all on standard 2100 MHz, so whenever we drove through a tunnel he rushed to his phone to get some messages through. Kind of the opposite to what you usually experience with loss of signal in tunnels :)
With the old WiFi networks (Virgin, Vodafone WiFi, etc.), yes.
With the new 4G+5G coverage, you can access that the same as you access above ground coverage.
The challenge isn’t the technology but rather the environment you’re trying to retrofit
Please expand…
The recently built lines had 5G etc from the start. It’s not difficult when the environment isn’t constraining you. Even malls add indoor 5g these days
It takes roughly 100us for light to travel 30km – Can you explain how the speed of light is relevant here?
But this is a lot better for tourists who need the internet to navigate underground. So I’m pleased for them.
I find that interesting. Another fascinating rabbit hole the article has sent me down is that there is an unused station called north end. I've been down that stretch before and i had no idea. Does anyone know if passengers can see it?