Anyone who lives in London knows that phone coverage on the Tube is anything but "cracked".
How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
31–40 of 179 posts
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#32Pretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
This behaviour is so bad on London (above ground) trains, if they ever do 'crack it' and roll out mobile signal to the Underground, those tiny carriages will be unbearable.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#33This is the new system for emergency communications? TfL just finished up an upgrade on that in 2021. That upgrade was built by Thales.[1] That system is purely for operational use, and is not cell phone compatible. It's compatible with the gear cops and fire brigades use. Is it being replaced? As late as 2018, the classic century-old system, with two bare wires on insulators on the tunnel walls, was still maintained…
It always better to have a backup.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#34Pretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
Why is your need for silence more important than other people's need to communicate?
Etiquette. Some are raised with it.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#35Pretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
Somehow even though there's great cell coverage in Warsaw metro people aren't being obnoxious with it.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#36Pretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
Who still calls anyway? Literally all my friends exclusively message now (on WhatsApp). 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.
One or two people per carriage/bus.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#37Just to add a piece of data to support this:
> 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!
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#38> There’s another distance limit at work here, and that is the speed of light. It takes milliseconds for the signal in your phone to reach the hotel above ground and be handed over to the mobile network.
It takes roughly 100us for light to travel 30km – Can you explain how the speed of light is relevant here?
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#39Just to add a piece of data to support this: > 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! https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/6831252952
Like many of London's woes, that's because of planning, councils have to approve infrastructure and block it: https://www.londoncentric.media/p/why-exactly-is-londons-pho...
I'd say it's developing-world tier, but a lot of the developing world has really good 5G signal these days.
Re: How London cracked mobile phone coverage on the Underground
#40Pretty neat but as someone who commutes every day on the New York subway I hope it’s never “cracked” here. Phone usage without headphones is already annoying enough and I greatly appreciate the various people trying to take calls eventually lose service.
This behaviour is so bad on London (above ground) trains, if they ever do 'crack it' and roll out mobile signal to the Underground, those tiny carriages will be unbearable.
There already is signal on many underground lines, and it’s pretty rare that people are playing things out loud in my experience?