Kieran Smith
speaker
86 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2026
last heard 1 Sep
Kieran Smith’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 1.
Appearances
The simple answer is that the tube was built a very long time ago.
We're talking over a hundred years.
And that means that it simply wasn't fitted with any mobile equipment, even wasn't fitted with mobile equipment on the newer lines.
So it's all had to be retrofitted.
And the challenge that comes with that is the tube tunnels are really small, which means that it's very hard to get equipment in.
And the workers have a very finite time to do it because trains run until midnight or one in the morning and start again at five.
So not only are the tunnels very old, but also there's not a huge amount of time to actually do the work to install the equipment needed to give us phone signal.
Well London's been a bit slow taking up the challenge on this one.
Paris had full four G coverage by twenty twenty and Berlin had the same by twenty twenty four.
London only got going in twenty twenty one when Transport for London
Signed a contract with Balden Networks, a technology provider, to roll out mobile coverage over the tube.
Now that was meant to be done by 2024.
However, the terms of the contract were changed midway through so that London wouldn't just have 4G coverage by then.
It would actually have 5G coverage and subsequently the ability to upgrade to 6G when that becomes available.
Now that's pushed the completion date back to the end of this year, so 2024.
twenty six.
I did, yes.
I went down with Transport for London and Bolden Networks.
Now, what I went down to see was how Baldin's technology connects into the tunnels and the tube stations from these nine base station hotels that they have around the center of London.
They're effectively a form of data center where all the different technology comes in.
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