Mobile phone blackspots will be eliminated on several major railway lines and train tunnels by 2028, the body which runs Britain’s railway infrastructure has pledged.
Network Rail, which is owned by the government, has signed a deal with two private telecoms firms in a move it claims will see 4G and 5G connectivity boosted on trains and in stations.
The Department for Transport (DfT) said work was set to begin next year and claimed it would “transform” journeys for passengers who have experienced calls cutting out and weak internet connections.
The project is expected to take three years because works can only occur when trains are not running on tracks.
In the first instance, the deal called Project Reach will involve the installation of 1,000km (621 miles) of ultra-fast fibre optic cable along parts of the East Coast Main Line from London King’s Cross to Newcastle, and the West Coast Main Line, which stretches from the capital to Manchester.
Cables will also be installed along the Great Western Main Line running from London to Cardiff, and the Chiltern Main Line. The four lines have been picked as they carry the most passengers.
Alan Thomas, chief executive of Manchester-based business insurer Ripe, said improving network coverage on trains should help improve productivity.
“Maybe it’s only a couple of hours on the train but that work time – if you can turn it into work time – is actually genuinely very, very helpful for our people,” he told the BBC’s Today programme.
“The other flipside for us, a lot of our customers are small business owners and entrepreneurs. Time is literally money and for them being able to make it useful, this otherwise dead time on a train journey, is fabulous.”
By the time the installation has been completed, it will be seven years since Project Reach was first proposed by Network Rail.
In early 2021, it announced the plan and promised that it would finalise a deal with a preferred bidder by the end of that year – two years later it named telecoms firm Neos Networks.
The plan is to expand that to more than 5,000km “in the near future”, the DfT said, but an exact year when this would be completed has not been revealed.
Network Rail oversees 16,000km of railway infrastructure in the UK.
Another telecoms company Freshwave has been handed the job of eliminating blackspots in 57 tunnels covering a total of nearly 50km, including the 4km-long Chipping Sodbury tunnel near Bristol.
It will work with mobile network operators (MNOs) BT, O2 and VodafoneThree on upgrading mobile connectivity in tunnels of 250m and longer on the East Coast, West Coast, and Great Western lines.
Freshwave will also collaborate with the MNOs on new 4G and 5G infrastructure at 12 of the biggest Network Rail stations including Birmingham New Street, Bristol Temple Meads and Edinburgh Waverley.
Network Rail said private investment in the project would save taxpayers about £300m as the two telecoms companies are funding it, rather than Network Rail having to renew its existing infrastructure.
Network Rail’s chief financial officer Jeremy Westlake said the investment model would “deliver the necessary upgrades to our telecoms infrastructure faster whilst offering significant value-for-money for the taxpayer and stimulating wider economic benefits across the country”.
He told the BBC’s Today programme that passengers would “start to see the benefits from early next year actually because the roll-out will be progressive, but we will be starting straight away with not-spots in particular”.
Bruce Williamson, spokesman for campaign group Rail Future, told the BBC better connectivity for passengers on the railways was “undoubtedly a good thing”.
“There is demand for connectivity. People live on their smart phones and people work on trains,” he added.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the roll-out would support the government’s “broader goals of economic growth and digital innovation”.
She said the deal was a “game-changer for passengers up and down the country”.
“By boosting connectivity and tackling signal blackspots, we are also ensuring a more reliable and efficient service,” she added.
