Mobile reception on trains - worst & best lines?

[infobleep]

Interestingly the government has announced today that rail companies should submit business cases for funding to roll over superfast broadband on railway lines in the most populated areas. I.e. where they see a commercial benefit.

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/tran...mised-ultrafast-mobile-broadband-8849109.html

Clearly the Government feel more could be done. Either that or they think it will get them more votes at the next election.

I'm surprised rail companies and / or mobile phone companies have not made more attempts at this by themselves. I know Southern did something with T-mobile some years ago but gave up on the idea. I think that was wi-fi.

I've never read a quote from a mobile phone company saying we'd love to provide access to your mobile on the train but the railway companies won't let us or a rail company say we'd love to provide access to your mobile but the mobile phone companies are not interested. Perhaps that's because neither of those statements are true.

May be the cost of implementing such a scheme was putting the companies off and they probably wouldn't want to publicly admit that.

 

[Starmill]

I'm on 3.

I get very poor reception on Virgin between London and Manchester or Wales.

However on EC up to Leeds I can happily use my phone as a hotspot for 95% of the journey.

Same network, broadly similar, though the couple of times I've got north of York it pretty much went until Newcastle

 

[klewer]

Most of the way between Shenfield and Ipswich on the GEML, Vodafone is very spotty, and trying to get a usable data connection is all but futile.
I don't travel very often to Cambridge and Norwich from Ipswich, but I seem to recall that the signal wasn't brilliant on those either (unsurprisingly).

Signal always seems better on the 321's or the Mk3's than the 360's.

 

[TUC]

The section between Darlington and York is always a virtual blank in terms of mobile signal. One of the frustrating things about mobile signals is that mountainous areas and totally flat areas (like The Vale of York) equally have problems.

 

[fusionblue]

I would prefer they work on improving capacity at already-existing fixed locations.

Before I left T-Orange, i could stand at London Bridge station during the peak and data pretty much stops dead.

 

[jon0844]

Data congestion might improve a bit with 4G (which is more efficient) but all operators are struggling as most people now use data, not voice.

Did the Southern WiFi service end then? It never seemed to fully roll out.

 

[tsr]

Did the Southern WiFi service end then? It never seemed to fully roll out.

The equipment was only on one or two trains, I think, and was disconnected from the wider web a while ago. Rumour has it (from fairly reliable sources) that you can now log in again after somebody managed to turn the system on recently, but that it will not do anything meaningful once you have a lease on the network.

Southern have used the excuse that they were unable to offer the service due to poor signal when passing through remote areas. Compared to the offering elsewhere, on trains which pass through locales which are actually worthy of this description, I don't think they are being entirely honest. Perhaps it was not viable due to the number of tunnels on the BML, the existing high usage of mobile data networks within London, Brighton, etc., or just reliability. When it was in service, I only ever actually managed to connect about twice.

 

[jon0844]

It was installed by a third party company, at no cost to Southern I believe, with the intention to make money by charging users - and that's why I guess it died. I assume few people paid, as they now have mobile data on their phone anyway.

Was it given for free to users in first class too? If not, I bet few people there paid either (and then that would have been a cost to Southern).

I believe it used a combination of mobile data and Wi-Max (for higher speeds) with new transmitters placed along the route, hence limiting the operation to London to Brighton pretty much. It's the same idea as Heathrow Express, which - despite being a far shorter route - probably attracts more usage from people that will pay.

 

[Pugwash]

The GEML has shockingly poor reception, with big black spots as close to London as Shenfield and around the Chelmsford area.

Data capacity around the Olympic Park at Stratford also appears to be an issue.

 

[bicbasher]

Before I left T-Orange, i could stand at London Bridge station during the peak and data pretty much stops dead.

It still happens to this day at London Bridge, especially in the evening peak.

Away from the stations, T-Mobile suffers from network congestion along most of Oxford Street.

 

[CheekyBandit]

Voyagers have bad mobile signal because of the heat reflecting treatment applied to the windows also blocks mobile signal.

Tried to send a text message to a friend who was on one (1335 Newcastle-Guildford) the other day and it took three attempts to get it delivered.

 

[jon0844]

It still happens to this day at London Bridge, especially in the evening peak.

Away from the stations, T-Mobile suffers from network congestion along most of Oxford Street.

Having conducted various data tests in London over the years, I can safely say that it isn't just T-Mobile that suffers along there, and other parts of London and the City.

4G should be able to cope with a lot more data users, as well as offering higher speeds, and another benefit will be when heavy users upgrade to 4G and actually make 3G a lot less congested.

Given 3G can offer speeds of up to 43.2Mbps (possibly even double that if any network decides to upgrade), it's hardly slow. Admittedly, the fastest I've ever had has been just below 30Mbps - but that's as fast as I get 4G in a lot of places.

 

[fusionblue]

It still happens to this day at London Bridge, especially in the evening peak.

Away from the stations, T-Mobile suffers from network congestion along most of Oxford Street.

Fortunately most people can avoid this around there as O2 Wifi (free to everyone, any network) runs the entire length of Oxford (not Bond) Street and Piccadilly Circus.

I moved to Three from T-Orange at the beginning of last month and in most places where i couldn't before (London Bridge and anything from Blackfriars to Denmark Hill/Loughborough Junction) I can use it again.