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Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, is expected to announce a £100m project to provide mobile signal in the London Underground before the Olympic Games in 2012.
The Sunday Telegraph reports that the UK’s largest mobile phone operators are to share the costs of installing and maintaining the network which will involve not just access at mobile platforms but also involve wires running down each tunnel in order to provide signal transceivers inside each carriage to relay calls on the move.
Vodafone, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and 3 are the networks expected to collaborate on the network although the Telegraph reports that it took a personal intervention from Johnson to "bash heads together in the mobile phone industry" in order to get the ball rolling if there’s any chance of implementation prior to the Games.
The mayor had earlier announced a London-wide Wi-Fi project for the capital which would also extend to train platforms in the underground.
With many of the older style tube trains clearly too loud to may any form of audible telephone conversation, hopefully the network will be more sensible used for texting and Internet access rather than yelling into phones.
