News: 1623232873

Great now we have someone "official" (from TFL) mentioning the word virus in conjunction with a mobile mast. That will be picked up by the usual nutjobs I'm sure.

I wonder why everyone is "too busy" in TFL to have a person or two to chaperone said telco types (and ensure they don't make a beeline for the nearest USB socket).

I read it as TfL's case was - it's a secure building but we have no security. Presumably when the bog springs a leak they can't admit a plumber 'cos he could deploy a wrench that could possibly harm a touchscreen. Or even - Mr Kevin Clack (network security and policing manager)

More like: we don't want you shoving a mast on our roof because that means there will be people we don't know demanding access to the roof, possibly at short notice and possibly out of hours. Therefore you can't look at our roof because, erm, terrorism and national security.

> someone coming into the building might insert a USB stick into a computer and either download some critical information or upload some virus

You'd kind of hope that if this building really did contain some nationally (or just London?) important infrastructure, that the security surrounding that sensitive bit of floorspace would reflect its importance - and its vulnerability.

So that nobody could just "insert a USB stick" into something that was vital to keep power supplied to the Underground.

And that the computers in there didn't have enabled, exposed USB sockets...

What kind of secure building doesn't have the capacity to escort someone to the roof. I'm sure Three would happily pay for the overtime of a security guard for the day.

If I were the mobile engineer, I'd volunteer to abseil onto the roof from a helicopter.

Not because it's a remotely sensible way to do it, mostly because it would be fun.

If I were the mobile engineer, I'd volunteer to abseil onto the roof from a helicopter.

Indeed. If a job isn't worth doing while accompanied by the "Mission: Impossible" theme music, then it simply isn't worth doing at all.

I concur. I once found myself humming that tune while fixing the bogs at work. I was the MD at the time too ...

I wouldn't bet on that given that they can't sort out a mast with worse data rates on 4G than 3G on one particular beam (walk to other side of mast things work as expected, back to side a and speeds < 0.05mbps) They claimed congestion, said they had fixed it, lasted about an hour and went back to the way it was, asked them to get someone in the UK to speak to me so I could explain the issue and instead got random gibberish from Indian alledgedly second line support, so asked for PAC, tried a few different sims, Vodafone and O2 best signal, went with O2, online deal £12 a month for 12 months and 60GB data a month. works at around 10mbps up and down (better still next town over oddly)

Don't you know that terrorists can throw USB sticks with the precision of knives throwers in movies, and hit the USB ports from several metres, even across gates and grids?

> terrorists can throw USB sticks with the precision of knives throwers in movies

Yes. Even around corners, up flights of stairs and through locked doors.

There are even USB sticks made of ice, so that once they have delivered their evil, world-conquering payloads, they melt and leave no evidence.

But only on the third try.

You'd kind of hope that if this building really did contain some nationally (or just London?) important infrastructure, that the security surrounding that sensitive bit of floorspace would reflect its importance

As I recall, when TfL chose to relocate to the Palestra building it was felt that the availability of lights-out hosting facilities made it unnecessary to provide a computer room. I did hear a tale that this resulted in the equipment operating London's traffic lights becoming homeless as it required access and attention. One plan at the time was, I gather, to acquire nondescript private premises to accommodate it. I'm assuming that wasn't the full extent of the security measures.

Although if it were, you wouldn't want a surveyor stumbling on it by accident...

It 's not just once though, is it ?

If they decide they want to put one there, there'll be disruption whilst it's installed and doubtless access required from time to time. And haven't compulsory site rental rates just been reduced, making a lot of people not want the hassle ?

The excuses are, I agree, a bit thin. But it's their roof. Why should they let someone build on it ?

Because under the digital economy act they have to. That law was introduced in 2017, and the legal test cases relating to it haven't played out yet. This appears to be another one.

Here in the USofA, mobile providers PAY the owners of the buildings a substantial sum every month for the space used (antennas on the roof or sides of the building, closet square footage for the radio and computer equipment, etc).

Does this not happen in the UK? Building owners aren't compensated at all?

My neighbor has a 200' tower on his property. It went up in the 90s for one mobile provider and he told me then that he was getting $1k/mo from them. There are now two more providers, plus some police and fire radios on the tower. I suspect he's getting upwards of $3k/mo from them.

Side benefit: we get excellent mobile signal strength :-)

Side disadvantage: For a while, we had interference problems with our garage door openers. Problems went away when they upgraded the equipment, which seems to happen every few years

Most likely it'd be a wayleave. This is probably the relevant bit of info:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/guidance-on-access-agreements

Absolutely the same is true in the UK. Also telephone and power companies must pay the owner to string cables over or under their land.

We have a wayleave payment for overhead power lines across our field, but not the underground BT phone cable.

I'll just put the plough on the tractor.....

BT used to have statuary powers to install cables across anyone's land, from the days that they were the GPO.

A better excuse would have been that there was some aspect of the roof, e.g. constructional weakness, that would preclude any load increasing work to be carried out, or that running a transmitter close to the TFL equipment might be hazardous. Both are suspect suggestions.

Does TFL, (does it stand for Tragically Failing London?) even own the building?

No doubt the QC was paid good appeared money for their dubious comedy show.

I suspect structural suitability would be exactly the kind of thing the survey was intended to check.

I get it, people really dont want another bloody telco mast on their office's roof. Fine. But ffs, come up with some better excuses!

I mean this really could have been easy for TfL. 1) Let them have access, but charge them for requiring 1 security guard per person per day of the survey. 2) Impress upon them that they need to prove that there is ZERO chance of the transmissions of a mast on the roof affecting the network control computers or any other computers on site. With a detailed explanation of the costs involved should a single computer fail and take down part of the TfL network. As well as a detailed breakdown of how this would be communicated to the public and the media during the course of such an event (with, naturally, blame being apportioned as TfL deemed appropriate).

With such explanations made, even if the Roof proved to be the best mast site within 20km, I could almost guarantee that the Network operators wouldnt touch it with a 100 foot pole (or a telecoms mast for that matter!) for fear of the publicity involved in being blamed for any problems on the London transport network...

So, you are encouraging TFL to lie yet again about the cause of problems then?

The transmit power is fairly low and highly directional. We had antennas on our office building and zero interference.

Additionally, the flat roofs of most commercial buildings are corrugated galvanised steel, grounded (earthed) for lightning protection, so they act as an excellent RF shield.

I would not be worried about interference to equipment. The same for human exposure. The RF field strength decreases as the inverse square, and the health & safety folks will do a field strength survey, I'm sure. Most of the energy is directed out away from the building anyhow, as that's where the mobiles are.

Can't have directed energy and inverse-square falloff: pick one! If it is mostly in-plane (sensible for a mast) then expect 1/r.

It'll probably be 1:r^1.2 ish, because there will be some out of plane dispersion making it not a pure 1/r, but you are right that it also isn't 1/r^2.

That actually makes the situation better though - since the power at the transmitter doesn't need to be as high to provide useful signal at the target locations.

And that of course is *why* they use non omnidirectional kit - lower power needed, lower cost.

>And that of course is *why* they use non omnidirectional kit - lower power needed, lower cost.

Actually, it's down to RF spectrum costs and user density. If you have an omni, all users in the vicinity need unique channels; with a 3-sector setup, you can reuse the bandwidth twice. Increase the sector count (decrease the angle) to increase available capacity.

But that's also why they use low power, but for a different reason - limit the range of a cell, and have another cell nearby, then you have more bandwidth in the same spectrum.

Just look at the spectrum auction costs to see their motivation!

Very true, I had forgotten about the possibilities of splitting local space by lobing whilst focusing on stacked dipole dispersion.

"being blamed for any problems on the London transport network..."

Given that TfL seem intent on driving (no pun intended) all vehicles out of London, I often wonder if the "f" might not actually stand for "Free" - as in, Transport-free London. I don't think anyone - not even the most ardent hole-excavating utility companies - do as much to disrupt travel in the city as TfL.

They don't need to blame anyone. It's just business-as-usual to them.

If my mobile phone provider caused complete gridlock in London including roads, rail and that thing you call an Underground but mostly runs overground then sitting here in Glasgow I would give exactly zero shits. I suspect most of the rest of the UK would feel the same.

Btw our Underground actually runs 100% under the ground here.

Probably the most appropriate compromise might be to suggest that external access to the roof is most appropriate, and that EE/Three can start assembling the scaffolding in the street.

Just look at the vehicle access security...

[1]GMaps link

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/iNYBd92uq8wNe7yN9

Cover the roof in solar panels to provide green energy.

That evidence is provided by Mr Kevin Clack, who is the soon-to-be former network security and policing manager for Transport for London

FTFY

The tight security concern is not unreasonable. It might sound foolish as a headline, but this is basic stuff.

The real headline should be that there was no workable procedure for escorting someone where they wanted to go.

Can Three etc sue TFL?

They've publicly stated they believe Three and other networks are a terrorist organization intent on doing damage to critical UK Infrastructure.

They should be made to apologize publicly, I'd say take down 50% of their billboards for the apology for 6months should be sufficient.

I consider this a non sequitur. After all, it would be libelous to claim that Apple is an organization intent on uploading private nude snaps and sex videos from people's iPhones to Facebook.

None the less, something of the sort happened recently - not because Apple wanted it to happen, but because some people repairing an iPhone on its behalf happened to engage in malfeasance on their own.

So they're only claiming that Three might not be 100% perfect at vetting their employees - and, since we haven't yet developed the technology to read people's minds, that is inevitably true.

I think the article didn't go into the required detail. The building freeholder would grant access and welcome mast rent. The leaseholder TFL won't allow physical. access. I'm pretty sure also that the lease terms if read carefully would establish that the leaseholder can be obliged to allow access for building-related issues.

Now that would put a bit of a different light on it.

However, perhaps not by much. After all, while normal lease terms might indeed preclude a leaseholder from denying physical access under such circumstances, I'm sure that if one were leasing a building to the GCHQ, they would be able to obtain special terms.

Why on earth would a law be enacted giving people the right to access someone else's building to build a cell phone mast?

If they want to put a cell phone mast on a building, they can always offer money to its owners. If they're not interested, that should be that.

Why would anyone think that compromising private property rights is a good idea?