London Underground Wi-Fi zone in time for the Olympics

Station surfing coming your way

London Underground Wi-Fi zone in time for the Olympics

28 March 2011 15:00 GMT / By Paul Lamkin

TFL, the chaps who run London's Underground service, has announced that it is inviting bidders for a tube-wide Wi-Fi contract, following a successful trial at Charing Cross.

BT Openzone ran the trial, and it's thought that Huawei and Thales are the two companies leading the charge on the hardware side of things. TFL is hoping that "existing service providers and other established internet service providers looking to expand into the public Wi-Fi market" come forward with offers as well.

There are currently 16 stations where TFL staff have access to Wi-Fi and these locations will be used in the first step to a Tube-wide web zone.

Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, said: "The roll out of Wi-Fi technology across the platforms and public areas of our Tube stations will finally allow Londoners to use mobile devices to pick up their emails, access social media sites and stay in touch with the world above while they traverse our subterranean transport network.

"We are inviting companies to bid to do this before next June, which would mean that even Londoners going underground will be able to keep up to date with the British medal tally at the 2012 Games."

The move only applies to the stations sadly, there are no plans at present to get Wi-Fi on the trains, which is a bummer.

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Olympics, London Tube, London Olympics 2012, London Underground, Wi-Fi, Online, Internet