O2's Christmas present for Glasgow: mobile phones on the underground

By Christmas, the Glasgow underground network will be the first place in the UK where mobile phone users can irritate their fellow travellers with shouts of "Hang on, I'm in the Tube".

O2 has signed a deal with Arqiva, a transmission company, and the Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT), to set up a multi-user distributed antenna system that will deliver the UK's first subway mobile communications. The scheme will go live at the start of December in five of the city's busiest underground stations – Buchanan Street, St Enoch, Kelvinbridge, Hillhead and Partick.

Coverage will initially be limited to the stations' platforms and concourses but the technology could be extended to offer coverage on trains running through the tunnels. Users will be able to use both 2G functions such as voice calls and text messages and 3G services such as data downloads and video streaming.

Gordon Maclennan, the assistant chief executive of SPT, said: "This has been some time in the planning but I'm delighted that we can offer this service to our passengers in time for Christmas.

"It's a first for Glasgow and it opens the door for wider WiFi coverage in the Underground in future. Accessibility and connectivity are key parts of our continuous subway modernisation prog-ramme."

The prospect of mobile phones on the Tube was first raised in London in 2006 by Ken Livingstone, then the mayor, but although talks are continuing there has been little concrete progress.

The Glasgow scheme could act as a trial for a similar development in the south. A spokesman for O2 said: "We continue to liaise with Transport for London, particularly in relation to the communications for the 2012 Olympics."

While the Glasgow scheme is the first of its type in the UK, it is not the first in the world. In Stockholm, every subway station already has a mobile phone signal.