In the past 3 posts I’ve had a high level look at the superb new London tube network coverage. With data rates of 500 Mbps without any special setup, it is nothing short of breathtaking. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for other busy places in London.
When traveling to, from and in London, I would have expected that by and large, I would have good network coverage and capacity, particularly at train stations and airports. While coverage was not a problem, the same can’t be said about capacity. Having been to London twice in recent months, I’ve spent some time at London Paddington station, London Waterloo station and Heathrow airport. During the day, these places are packed with people and I could only get downlink datarates of 2 to 4 Mbps. In all of those places!! I tried three LTE/5G networks and got the same result from all of them. In 2024, that’s difficult to work with bordering on the unusable. At similar places in other cities in Europe with equal customer density, the situation is, in my experience, a lot better. I’m not sure what the problem is, but it’s not technology. Even only installing some 5G n78 equipment there would significantly improve the situation. Reduce cell sizes and add additional micro sites in those places and things will be good for years to come.
So long story short, working online at train stations and airports around London is not something I’d do these days if I can avoid it. Some work to improve the situation is needed, and soon!