Welcoming Project Reach’s aim of improved UK rail user mobile connectivity

Well, we need to reset HS2, and so extend the country’s one (HS1) high-speed rail footprint to perhaps a little nearer China’s 26,000 miles (or even Spanish levels of rollout). But to make up for it and get improved UK rail user mobile connectivity, we can deliver “the biggest upgrade to rail telecoms in a generation”.

Many of us would have preferred the biggest upgrade to the permanent way in a generation, but we will still take what we can. Specifically, building on £41 million already confirmed in the government’s National Infrastructure Strategy to introduce low-earth-orbit satellite connectivity on all mainline trains, and so significantly improve both the availability and internet data connection speeds for Wi-Fi connected passengers, welcome on board a promised, long-overdue end to the UK’s worst mobile signal blackspots on the railway network.

Note we have to say ‘worst’; for all its promise, the scheme is not anything like the whole national railway network anyway, a point to which we shall shortly return. But first, let’s go back to the plan, announced by the Department for Transport in late June, of 1,000km of “ultrafast, state-of-the-art” new fibre optic cable on (some) major rail lines—Project Reach.

This will be delivered by a public-private partnership between Network Rail and B2B telecoms provider Neos Networks and mobile, 5G and Wi-Fi connectivity infrastructure specialist Freshwave.

The result is a way to both boost commuter productivity while simultaneously creating an improved digital backbone for the country’s rail network, ending the days of dropped calls and interrupted streaming on key routes between London, Manchester, Newcastle and Cardiff.

The deal also somehow (the details are unclear) managed to save taxpayers around £300 million—perhaps by asking the commercial partners to do the work instead or something? In any case, rail users along the East Coast Main Line, parts of the West Coast Main Line and the Great Western Main Line will soon get the benefits of this initial 1,000km.

It will be immediately obvious that that isn’t half of the network. (Actually, it’s more like 15%.) Southern, which serves a lot of the Home Counties and commuter belt into London, doesn’t get a mention; we happen to often curse the Weymouth line, which has lamentable coverage between Basingstoke and Winchester, and again in the New Forest – prime commuting locations, so you’d think someone would have done something about this by now.

Nonetheless, this is very welcome, though it is a job that needed to be tackled years ago. We also need to note the “ambition” of the partners to expand beyond 5,000 kilometres “in the near future”, while applauding the fact that Freshwave will tackle signal blackspots in 57 tunnels, covering almost 50 kilometres, including the 4-kilometre-long Chipping Sodbury tunnel near Bristol.

A vision of improved UK rail user mobile connectivity

At least that first 1,000km will get lit pretty quickly; the first installation of mobile infrastructure is expected to begin in 2026 and fully rolled out by 2028. As part of the deal, mobile network operators will also invest in new 4G/5G infrastructure to speed up improved UK rail user mobile connectivity at 12 of the biggest Network Rail stations across the country including Birmingham New St, Bristol Temple Meads, Edinburgh Waverley, Euston, Glasgow Central, King’s Cross, Leeds, Liverpool Lime Street, Liverpool Street, Manchester Piccadilly, Paddington and Waterloo. 

No wonder the Secretary of State for Transport states that, “By boosting connectivity and tackling signal blackspots, we are ensuring a more reliable and efficient service [while] the enhanced network will also enable better monitoring of railway assets and facilitate new technologies that rely on improved connectivity, paving the way for more reliable train services and improved safety for railway workers.”

Things may also pick up when we have a unified railway with the formation of Great British Railways, with Network Rail saying that Project Reach’s enhanced telecoms infrastructure will play a key role in its ambition to “provide a data-driven railway of the future, delivering better connectivity and a better, more reliable train service for our passengers”.

That’s not just improved UK rail user mobile connectivity verbiage; the upgraded infrastructure will use enhanced fibre cables, increasing from 48-count to 432-count, which should enable better performance monitoring, smart sensors, and CCTV systems. 

Project Reach has been welcomed by UK operators like BT Group (EE), O2 (“Our £700m Mobile Transformation Plan is focusing investment on parts of the network that experience the highest levels of demand and are the most critical. Railways are an important example of this, and we are committed to improving the connectivity experience for the O2 customers that use them”) and VodafoneThree.

We’re also happy to tip our hat to it and wish this vision of improved UK rail user mobile connectivity every success. But the heart of that Great British Railways — which we are promised will be a new state-owned railway company that will operate most rail infrastructure in Great Britain, most passenger rail services in England and some cross-border passenger rail services in Scotland and Wales — must be a full commitment to truly 21st century mobile on rail communications, and on more like 50 or even 75% of the UK’s rail transport system, not 15%.

We would, of course, never expect 100%. This is the country with just 68 miles of high-speed rail, after all.

But who knows: consumer demand alone might push the Express to improved UK rail user mobile connectivity along at 125mph—or even faster.