Boris Johnson's mayoral hopes of a mobile phone network being installed on the London underground in time for the 2012 Olympic Games have been dashed.
Transport for London and mobile operators including 02, Vodafone, Everything Everywhere and 3 and the French engineering company Thales, agreed to abandon the project over funding issues and the technical complexity of installing the system in time.
Huawei, a Chinese network equipment supplier, was going to donate £50m of equipment to wire up the network as a contribution from one Olympic nation to another, while the mobile networks were going to pay for 3G networks to be installed.
The decision to ditch the project will be a disappointment to the capital's Conservative mayor, who said earlier this year that while some tube users would have reservations about people being able to use their mobiles on the underground network, it was the "way to go".
Other capital cities, including Paris, already have mobile phone signals across their underground networks.
However, Johnson had warned Londoners not to "count their chickens" on having the service in place in time for the Games because the project would be both commercially and technically difficult to deliver.
City hall insisted the project remained "a long-term goal", pointing out that a separate plan to install Wi-Fi at 120 tube stations in time for the Games would go ahead.
Transport for London said: "The mayor and TfL made it clear that, given the financial pressures on TfL's budgets, any solution would have to have been funded through mobile operators with no cost to fare or taxpayers.
"The parties were not able to agree a viable proposal, and the project is therefore not being progressed at this time."
Vodafone confirmed that talks for underground mobile phone access had fallen through. A statement said: "We have been working closely with infrastructure partners and London Underground for some time with the hope of delivering mobile services to the … underground and are disappointed that it will not be possible in time for next year's Olympic Games.
"As a group, we will continue to positively explore all other avenues available to us to provide a service at a later date."
A spokesperson for Johnson said: "We are grateful to the companies who explored the possibility of getting full mobile coverage on the tube, although disappointed the genuine problems encountered could not be overcome on this occasion.
"It remains a long-term goal, but our efforts meanwhile will be focused on guaranteeing a major expansion of Wi-Fi coverage in tube stations in time for the Olympics.
"We are proceeding with great energy and haste to deliver that improvement, which will mean Londoners can then use their mobile devices to pick up their emails or access the internet while passing through our stations."
