Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3360-2324

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20
December 2023 asking for information about the Elizabeth line mobile phone
coverage.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 21 January 2024. We publish a
substantial range of information on our website on subjects including
operational performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance
and our financial performance. This includes data which is frequently
asked for in FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.

 

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

show quoted sections

 

Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3360-2324

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20
December 2023 asking for information about the Elizabeth line mobile phone
coverage.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. You
asked: On the TfL mobile coverage map, it states that coverage on the
Elizabeth line will be 4G only, while other lines will gain 5G coverage.

 

Could you please provide me redacted copies of all emails between TfL
employees to Boldyn Networks (previously BAI Communications) which relate
to mobile coverage on the Elizabeth line during 2023.

 

If this request is unsuitably broad to fall within the required hours, and
only if this is the case, please narrow the scope of the search to include
any mobile coverage related email chains with the keyword "interference"
to Boldyn/BAI instead.

 

I can confirm we do hold the information you require. However, to provide
the information you have requested, even in respect of your narrowed
request, would exceed the ‘appropriate limit’ of £450 set by the Freedom
of Information (Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.

 

Under section 12 of the FOI Act, we are not obliged to comply with a
request if we estimate that the cost of determining whether we hold the
information, locating and retrieving it and extracting it from other
information would exceed the appropriate limit. This is calculated at £25
per hour for every hour spent on the activities described.

 

We have carried out a TfL wide search for all emails in 2023 that involved
[1]@boldyn.com or @baicommunications.com that contained the word
‘interference’ and this produced 1,200 hits or matches. Had we carried out
a similar search but used the initial parameters you refer to in your
request, this would have clearly resulted in a much greater number of
hits. All of of these emails  / email chains would need to be individually
reviewed to establish if they are directly relevant to your request and
then we would need to extract and compile all of those that were relevant,
noting that some of the emails are likely  to be duplicates, due to emails
being repeated within email chains or to multiple people, as well as
emails being forwarded internally for discussion during this time period.
Therefore the actual number of emails covered by your request will be a
sub-set of these hits.  As a result, we have therefore estimated that to
manually locate, extract and collate all of the relevant emails caught by
the search we have carried out would considerably exceed the cost limit.

 

To help bring the cost of responding to your request within the £450
limit, you may wish to consider narrowing its scope so that we can more
easily locate, retrieve and extract the information you are seeking. For
example, by focusing on one particular aspect of the subject matter or for
a narrowed period of time, between specific individuals and a more
specific keyword.

 

Additionally, by way of further advice and assistance. we have however
prepared a short description of our approach, explaining in a little more
detail than we have in our press release, which is attached for your
review.

 

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to
appeal.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

From: FOI
Sent: 29 December 2023 14:04
To: 'David Wheatley' <[2][FOI #1062074 email]>
Subject: Re: new foi ref 3360-2324 CRM:0138556

 

Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3360-2324

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 20
December 2023 asking for information about the Elizabeth line mobile phone
coverage.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 21 January 2024. We publish a
substantial range of information on our website on subjects including
operational performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance
and our financial performance. This includes data which is frequently
asked for in FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[3]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.

 

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[4]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

show quoted sections

Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3678-2324

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 18
January 2024 asking for information about the Elizabeth line mobile phone
coverage.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 14 February 2024. We publish a
substantial range of information on our website on subjects including
operational performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance
and our financial performance. This includes data which is frequently
asked for in FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[1]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.

 

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[2]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

show quoted sections

 

Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3678-2324

 

Thank you for your follow on request from ref 3360-2324,  received by
Transport for London (TfL) on 18 January 2024 asking for information about
the Elizabeth line mobile phone coverage.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. You
asked: On the TfL mobile coverage map, it states that coverage on the
Elizabeth line will be 4G only, while other lines will gain 5G coverage.
Could you please provide me redacted copies of all emails between TfL
employees from 1 July 2023 to present that involved @boldyn.com or
@baicommunications.com and contained all of the words 'interference', '5G'
and either 'elizabeth' or 'crossrail'? I'm not familiar with what your
search system will allow you to search by in terms of combining multiple
search terms together, so please let me know if this isn't possible.

 

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of
the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy.

 

With regards to 5G on the Elizabeth line the end goal is to have 4G and 5G
deployed fully in both stations and tunnels on the Elizabeth line. In the
short term to facilitate early delivery we will initially deploy 4G in the
stations and 4G and 5G in the tunnels – this will be subject to further
testing in both stations and tunnels . Tunnel testing has yet to be
completed, although we don’t anticipate any issues from the
intermodulation studies that we have already completed. We obviously take
the testing aspect of delivery very seriously. The tunnel 5G coverage will
inevitably also leak into the station to provide some coverage there too. 

 

For efficiencies’ sake, as far as possible, we are using the already
installed infrastructure to provide cellular coverage. We are also using
the maximum number of frequencies to help the Mobile Network Operators
(MNOs) provide the best possible service. For the tunnels we are only
using the existing antenna system (leaky feeders in the tunnels). The rest
of the infrastructure is new build and therefore we are using the same
approach as we are for the London Underground. This allows us to provide
the same service as with the London Underground with both 4G and 5G
available.

 

In the stations we are also initially using the existing station antenna
system. It differs slightly for the two types of station, in LU managed
stations the infrastructure is shared with all other systems, whereas in
Rail for London (RfL) managed stations there are two antenna systems with
a slightly different configuration of systems deployed. We repeat the
testing on each. However, the major obstacle is that the existing
infrastructure does not support the higher frequencies that the MNOs
require for their 5G coverage. This is the reason that we are not
initially deploying 5G in the stations . To overcome this issue, we would
need to install the same small-form low power radios that we have
installed in the LU stations . Although this seems straightforward the
design of the Elizabeth line stations makes running cables difficult. In
the light of this challenge, we decided that early coverage with 4G was a
sensible way forward with a longer term aspiration to ins tall the 5G
radios at a later date. We will rerun the testing before these new radios
are turned on during passenger hours of course.

 

I can confirm we do hold some of the information you require. However, to
provide the information you have requested would provide a significant
burden to our resources and therefore we are not obliged to provide this
information in accordance with section 14 of the FOI Act.

 

We carried out two separate searches which was necessary to enable us to
use all the search terms you requested. Across the two searches there were
around 160 hits and, whilst there was some duplication, there were also a
number of attachments and documents caught in the searches which we would
need to also review, along with checking if we need to consider applying
one or more of the exemptions from disclosure under the FOI Act.
Therefore, due to the wide scope of your request and the resources
required to answer in full, we are refusing your request under section 14
of the FOI Act.

 

Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London
and we consider that answering this request would represent a
disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our
work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited
resources and placing an unacceptable burden on a small number of
personnel. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request
falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a
conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue
burden on our resources.

 

On the specific application of section 14(1) we have been steered by the
ICO guidance on the use of that exemption that can be found on its website
here:

 

[1]https://ico.org.uk/media/1198/dealing-wi...

 

You will note that this guidance includes the following advice to public
authorities:

 

“Section 14(1) may be used in a variety of circumstances where a request,
or its impact on a public authority, cannot be justified. Whilst public
authorities should think carefully before refusing a request as vexatious
they should not regard section 14(1) as something which is only to be
applied in the most extreme circumstances”;

 

“Sometimes a request may be so patently unreasonable or objectionable that
it will obviously be vexatious….In cases where the issue is not clear-cut,
the key question to ask is whether the request is likely to cause a
disproportionate or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or
distress…This will usually be a matter of objectively judging the evidence
of the impact on the authority and weighing this against any evidence
about the purpose and value of the request”;

 

“The public authority may take into account the context and history of the
request, where this is relevant”;

 

“The information Commissioner recognises that dealing with unreasonable
requests can place a strain on resources and get in the way of delivering
mainstream services or answering legitimate requests.”

 

“Section 14(1) is designed to protect public authorities by allowing them
to refuse any request which have the potential to cause a disproportionate
or unjustified level of disruption, irritation or distress”.

 

“…the concepts of ‘proportionality’ and ‘justification’ are central to any
consideration of whether a request is vexatious”;

 

The guidance includes some specific indicators to help public authorities
judge whether or not a case should be considered vexatious. This includes
the following:

 

“Burden on the authority: the effort required to meet the request will be
so grossly oppressive in terms of the strain on time and resources, that
the authority cannot reasonably be expected to comply, no matter how
legitimate the subject matter or valid the intentions of the requester”;

 

“Frequent or overlapping requests: the requester submits frequent
correspondence about the same issue or sends in new requests before the
public authority has had an opportunity to address their earlier
enquiries”.

 

“Disproportionate effort: the matter being pursued by the requester is
relatively trivial and the authority would have to extend a
disproportionate amount of resources in order to meet the request.”

 

If you would like to re-submit a more focused, specific request then we
will, of course, consider it.

 

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to
appeal.

 

Yours sincerely

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

 

 

From: FOI
Sent: 18 January 2024 14:22
To: 'David Wheatley' <[2][FOI #1062074 email]>
Subject: new foi ref 3678-2324 CRM:0138606

 

Dear Mr Wheatley

 

TfL Ref: 3678-2324

 

Thank you for your request received by Transport for London (TfL) on 18
January 2024 asking for information about the Elizabeth line mobile phone
coverage.

 

Your request will be processed in accordance with the requirements of the
Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. 

 

A response will be sent to you by 14 February 2024. We publish a
substantial range of information on our website on subjects including
operational performance, contracts, expenditure, journey data, governance
and our financial performance. This includes data which is frequently
asked for in FOI requests or other public queries. Please check
[3]http://www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/transpar... to see if this helps you.

 

We will publish anonymised versions of requests and responses on the
[4]www.tfl.gov.uk website. We will not publish your name and we will send
a copy of the response to you before it is published on our website.

 

In the meantime, if you would like to discuss this matter further, please
do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely

 

 

Sara Thomas

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

 

 

show quoted sections