The Tyne and Wear Metro, which is an overground and underground light rail rapid transit system that is operated by Nexus (public body), looks unlikely to see 4G and 5G mobile coverage being expanded from O2 (Virgin Media), Vodafone and Three UK after the operators “turned down the opportunity to install equipment in the tunnels.”
The transit system, which has had some 4G (mobile broadband) coverage from EE (BT) in the tunnels since 2019, currently serves Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, and the City of Sunderland – together forming the ceremonial county of Tyne and Wear in North East England.
However, back in February 2023 a plan was hatched by Nexus, which sought to “improve digital connectivity on Tyne and Wear Metro, with the aim of creating a seamless 4G or 5G signal across the whole network” (here). Nexus essentially intended to engage with O2, Three UK and Vodafone to build improved connectivity in those ‘not spot’ areas where the signal is weaker, including tunnels, cuttings and lines near the coast.
The approach was seen as being cheaper and easier to deploy than delivering on-train WiFi, which was also found to be less popular among commuters than directly improving mobile coverage. Nexus originally planned to do this upgrade earlier, but that effort was “held up during the Covid-19 pandemic“.
What went wrong for Nexus?
The problem is that a year and a half has now passed since the plan was re-started and nothing much appears to have happened. Nexus has not issued any further updates, and our attempts to reach their press team have been met with silence.
Thankfully one of our readers, Scott, who is a local resident of the area, did – after making several attempts over several weeks – finally elicit a brief response from Nexus: “Unfortunately other telephone suppliers turned down the opportunity to install equipment in the tunnels.”
As for the mobile network operators themselves: O2 (Virgin Media) declined to comment, while Three UK completely ignored several of our hails, and a spokesperson for Vodafone offered somewhat of an olive branch: “We did have early conversations with Nexus regarding the programme. We’d be happy to discuss it further with them.”
However, ISPreview understands from our research that EE may have had an advantage over the other operators, due in part to the historical way the system was deployed (i.e. they appear to have inherited the fibre used for backhaul in the tunnels). Rival operators would thus have needed to deliver their own cables to every signal station, which is an incredibly costly and logistical challenge given that it involves working around a live railway.
The London Underground and Tfl solved a similar problem by adopting neutral host services via Boldyn Networks (i.e. a network that all operators could access on the same terms), although making the case for such a big project on the Tyne and Wear Metro would still have been quite challenging.
Suffice to say that it doesn’t look like mobile connectivity for non-EE based operators on the Metro is going to get better anytime soon, which is somewhat of a missed opportunity given all of the recent investment that has gone into the Metro (e.g. the £362m programme to build a new fleet of trains, which recently reached the halfway stage with 23 of 46 new Stadler trains now built).