Telecom news

• Tickets Alert: Banqueting House is reopening to the public

  07-11-2025 18:10 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Whitehall’s Banqueting House, one of the few survivors of the vast Palace of Whitehall, is about to reopen to the public for a few open days following over a year of restoration work.
  Banqueting House prior to restoration work (c) ianVisits
  At the time of its construction in 1622, it stood out brightly amongst the Tudor brick and wood with its bright white stone facade and design by the architect Inigo Jones, who introduced the principles of classical architecture to Britain with this buil
  
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• Illuminated River boat ride tours add extra dates over Christmas

  09-12-2025 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The Thames bridges through central London are illuminated each night as part of a vast public artwork, best appreciated either on foot along the riverside or from a boat gliding beneath them.Illuminated River currently lights nine bridges: London, Cannon Street, Southwark and Millennium were the first to receive their vivid night-time makeovers in 2019, with Blackfriars, Waterloo, the Golden Jubilee, Westminster and Lambeth joining the project in 2021.
  The boat tour operator has now announced so
  
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• Unexpected repairs force TfL to shut Barons Court tube station’s platforms through 2026

  09-12-2025 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The ongoing refurbishment of Barons Court tube station has uncovered more problems than expected, and Transport for London (TfL) has announced that it will have to partially close the station.Refurbishment of the station to repair damaged sections and repaint the platform canopies started earlier this year. Although TfL initially said it did not expect to close the station, that has now changed.
  TfL wrote to H&F council in early December to say that circumstances have changed.
  “After w
  
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• Smithfield Market’s Christmas Eve meat auction is back for 2025

  09-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Smithfield meat market’s Christmas Eve sale is a much-loved highlight for many attendees, and the organisers have confirmed to ianVisits that it will go ahead again this year.The sell-off dates back to the days before refrigeration, when customers would buy as close to Christmas as possible, and meat dealers needed to sell off everything before the Christmas shutdown.
  Such was the throng at the market on Christmas Eve that it sometimes made the news, as in 1912, when one trader was said to
  
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• Southbank Centre lights up winter nights with a free illuminated art trail

  09-12-2025 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  A winter lights display has appeared around the Southbank Centre, offering a free illuminated exploration of the area.Physically visible all the time, they naturally look their best at night, and maybe if you don’t object, just after it’s been raining when reflections are at their best.
  It’s a fairly small widespread display, so you can do the whole lot in maybe 20 minutes, and some might not even look like temporary art at all. For the instagrammers, there’s a large cube
  
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• LNR rolls out longer trains, delivering 20% more seats on Euston services

  09-12-2025 12:02 via ianvisits.co.uk
  London Northwestern Railway (LNR) has announced it will introduce thousands of extra seats on its services to and from London Euston this weekend as part of a major timetable change.
  (c) London Northwestern Railway (LNR)
  From 14th December, LNR is rolling out new longer trains onto its Trent Valley line, which connects the capital with destinations in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Buckinghamshire.
  The new fleet – known as Class 730/2s – are longer than the trains they replace and w
  
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• Red, White and Rails: The Great British Railways livery unveiled for 2026 rollout

  09-12-2025 10:23 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The new livery, which will start appearing on England’s trains next year, has been shown off as part of the wider Great British Railways rebrand.
  Concept image (c) Department for Transport
  The design features a red, white and blue colour scheme and sharp angles to create a design mirroring the Union Flag. Great British Railways will also reuse the classic British Rail double-arrows logo, without the suggested Union Jack colours which had been touted earlier in the year, to generally negati
  
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• Gunnersbury station’s step-free plans advance – but commuters still waiting for Godot

  09-12-2025 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Gunnersbury Station has taken one tiny step forward towards getting step-free access, but there’s a very long way to go before it arrives.
  The narrow staircase to the station exit
  As part of the planning permission to refurbish the office building next to the station into residential flats, the developer will provide funding for design studies and set aside land for the station upgrade.
  However, there’s no funding to rebuild the station itself.
  A couple of concept images were shown o
  
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• The 1.3-hour rule: Why quicker trains encourage longer-distance commutes

  08-12-2025 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Regardless of how people get to work or where they live, it turns out that most of us tend to spend the same amount of time commuting to work.
  Unsplash+ License
  Long suspected and at times disputed, a new review of people’s commutes across 43 countries found a strong bias toward a daily commute of around 78 minutes (1.3 hours), regardless of how it occurs.
  Whether driving, on the bus, tram or train, walking or cycling, the study by ICTA-UAB and McGill University in Canada found the 1.3 hou
  
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• Royal Observatory to unveil a Mirror Moon sculpture in March

  08-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  You’ve looked at Luke Jerram’s inflatable moon as it pops up around the place, and next year, you will be able to touch a metal moon as well.
  Mirror Moon (c) Luke Jerram
  Arriving at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in March, this new installation, measuring two metres in diameter, uses accurate topographic data from NASA to map the textures of the Moon onto the mirrored steel surface.
  The tactile medium allows visitors to run their fingers across the craters, valleys, mountains and sm
  
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• HELCH’s dropped Hs land in Dalston exhibition

  08-12-2025 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  In 2018, a much-loved piece of graffiti near Denham on the M25 saying “give peas a chance” was itself graffiti’d with Give Helch a Chance. Since then, Helch has been seen dotted all around the place, and now the anonymous typographically inclined artist has their own show.The Peas graffiti, on a railway bridge crossing the M25 has since been repainted many times, to the considerable annoyance of Network Rail, and reminding us of the tension between street artists who often buil
  
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• Tickets Alert: Discounted tickets to Open Gardens Weekend 2026

  05-12-2025 17:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Tickets for an annual weekend when loads of London’s usually private gardens are open to the public have gone on sale, with a Christmas discount for early buyers.
  Bramham Gardens (c) ianVisits
  The event began with volunteers’ passion to open up private West London squares and has since grown to embrace gardens across central London – from roof spaces owned by city banks, to historic institutions, community allotments and even the Prime Minister’s own Downing Street garden
  
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• Elizabeth line to run every three minutes on Saturdays as service ramps up

  05-12-2025 16:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  There will soon be an Elizabeth line train through the core section of the network every three minutes on Saturdays, as TfL prepares to increase the service.Currently, there are 16 trains an hour through the core section on Saturdays, but this will increase to 20 trains an hour from Saturday 20th December, the week of the national timetable change which kicks in earlier that week.
  The additional services will run between approximately 11am and 8pm each Saturday, with two additional trains per ho
  
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• Southeastern rufurbishing its 20-year old Class 376 trains

  05-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Southeastern has begun a full mid-life refresh of its 20-year-old Class 376 suburban trains, with the first upgraded unit, 376027, returning to passenger service last week.
  Refurbished interior (c) Southeastern
  The multi-million programme will cover all 36 five-car units in the fleet, delivering around 11,000 newly refurbished seats, more than 4,000 power and USB sockets, and the replacement or overhaul of some 29,000 interior components, including wall and ceiling panels, grab poles, trims and
  
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• Christmas sale on tickets to see The Moustrap

  05-12-2025 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Famously the world’s longest consistently running play, Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap has now been running for over 70 years, and is one of those plays that everyone is presumed to see once in their lives.The murder-mystery storyline is set in “the present”, presumably England, around the time the play was published in 1952, including the continuation of World War II rationing.
  The play is based on a short story, but Christie asked that the story not be published as long as
  
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• Billionaire Drahi comes out fighting as creditors fall through ‘trap doors’

  05-12-2025 06:00 via ft.com
  Lenders to Franco-Israeli tycoon’s Altice empire are guessing his next move after falling victim to an aggressive restructuring
  
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• Auf Wiedersehen, Jet? Eurostar and DB revive plans for direct London–Germany trains

  04-12-2025 18:52 via ianvisits.co.uk
  There could be direct rail links between London and Germany from the early 2030s, after Eurostar signed an agreement with Deutsche Bahn (DB).
  Eurostar Celestia at St Pancras station (c) Eurostar
  If the service launches, it would likely see journey times of four to five hours between London and Frankfurt, with possible stops at Cologne and Brussels. Although that would be slower than flying, it would be comparable when you factor in that the railways would drop people off right in the centre of t
  
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• British Museum is promising ‘Good Vibrations’ for the Bayeux Tapestry’s trip to the London

  04-12-2025 16:17 via ianvisits.co.uk
  When the Bayeux Tapestry makes its historic visit to the UK next year, it will need to travel in a container that is exceptionally resistant to vibrations.That’s one of the conditions applied to the transfer, which the government has just revealed, ensuring that the precious tapestry does not experience more than 2 millimetres of vibration per second on its trip to London.
  This is going to be a very interesting challenge for the engineers tasked with constructing a cargo box that can be lo
  
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• Elizabeth line drives Liverpool Street station to nearly 100 million entries and exits

  04-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  London Liverpool Street has retained its title as Great Britain’s busiest railway station for the third year running, with almost 100 million entries and exits, according to figures from the Office of Rail and Road.
  It’s quite possible that the station could have broken the 100 million barrier if it hadn’t been closed for 8 days last Christmas (and will be again this Christmas) for engineering works.
  Liverpool Street station
  At the other end of the spectrum, Elton and Orston in
  
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• From BHS to Gothic revival: Oxford Street tower lined up for cathedral-inspired rebuild

  04-12-2025 12:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  A familiar Oxford Street landmark, once home to the London College of Fashion and British Home Stores, could be in line for a rather unexpected reinvention — a rebuild inspired by medieval cathedral architecture.
  Currently
  Proposed (c) Planning documents / developer
  The original complex was completed in 1958 under the plot-ratio rules introduced in 1947, which encouraged taller structures set back behind lower street-frontages. Hence, the classic mid-century “podium with tower”
  
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• Look on His Works: Ramesses the Great exhibition is coming to London

  04-12-2025 11:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Ramesses the Great is coming to London next year, as a large exhibition of ancient Egyptian artefacts goes on display at Battersea.
  (c) Ramses & the Pharaohs’ Gold
  Ramesses II, better known as Ramses the Great, ruled more than 3,200 years ago and is widely hailed as the mightiest pharaoh of Egypt’s most powerful era, the New Kingdom. His 66-year reign – the longest of any pharaoh – cemented his reputation as a supreme builder, warrior, statesman and, with around 90&nd
  
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• TfL bids to take over Moorgate mainline with plan to increase Great Northern services

  04-12-2025 09:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Transport for London (TfL) has formally applied to take over the mainline railway out of Moorgate station north to Welwyn Garden City and to Stevenage via Hertford North.
  Although expected, and also suggested as an option in the government’s recent new towns paper, a Freedom of Information request has given some more details of what a TfL run service would look like.
  What is known as “Great Northern Inners” comprises the tunnels from Moorgate to Finsbury Park, and just north of
  
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• Disused telephone box becomes solar-powered herb garden

  04-12-2025 08:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  An old red telephone box in Waltham Forest has been turned into a vertical farm growing herbs for a local charity.Funded by the local council through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), the transformation of a disused British red telephone box, located just outside the William Morris Gallery on Forest Road, has turned it into a self-watering vertical garden.
  Inside the phone box is a custom designed, 3D printed ‘Petal Planter’ vertical system, complete with solar-powered ventilati
  
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• TfL Go adds real-time line alerts and improved train info in latest update

  03-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  Transport for London (TfL) has rolled out a new set of upgrades to its free TfL Go journey-planning app, adding features to provide passengers with personalised travel information across the network.
  (c) TfL
  The most significant change is the introduction of real-time line status notifications. Users can now receive instant alerts when their selected Tube, Elizabeth line, DLR, London Overground or Tram routes are being delayed. Notifications can be customised by line and time of day, and paused
  
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• Tickets Alert: Luxmuralis light and sound show to fill a central London church

  03-12-2025 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  For one week next February, St Martin-in-the-Fields will swap its usual calm for a full-blown assault of colour and projection as Luxmuralis brings its latest Son-et-Lumière installation to the church.
  From the 2022 show (c) ianVisits
  The journey begins outside, where the façade becomes the first canvas, before descending into the crypt, transformed by sweeping washes of light, and finally into the main church, where the full spectacle unfolds.
  Based on the shows in 2022/23, it&rsq
  
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• India reverses order to install government app on all smartphones

  03-12-2025 12:36 via ft.com
  Communications minister says use of state-run cyber security app is ‘completely voluntary’ following public outcry
  
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• Stansted Airport’s contactless train ticketing delayed as Greater Anglia hits software snag

  03-12-2025 12:26 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The planned rollout of London-style contactless payments at Stansted Airport has been delayed after encountering software issues.The plan had been for 50 stations around London to enable contactless pay as you go ticketing from 14th December, but problems with the Greater Anglia route means its stations are being delayed.
  For pay as you go with contactless to work correctly, train company fares must be fully integrated with TfL’s fare system.  During testing, the system identified iss
  
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• Government to broaden railcard train travel access for disabled travellers

  02-12-2025 15:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The eligibility for disabled people to get discounted rail travel is to be improved, reflecting a better understanding of disabilities.The application process for the Disabled Persons Railcard (DPRC), which offers a third off rail travel for themselves and a companion, is to be expanded so that both visible and non-visible disabilities are better recognised and supported.
  The changes follow a review that concluded that the Railcard’s eligibility criteria should better reflect modern unders
  
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• Mayor of London urged to restart Crossrail 2 – and seek new tax powers to fund it

  02-12-2025 14:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  The Mayor of London should restart planning for Crossrail 2 while also arguing for more powers to raise local taxes to pay for it, concludes a report by the London Assembly’s Budget and Performance Committee.
  The Crossrail 1 portal at Royal Oak
  The report spends most of its time looking at why building new infrastructure in London (and the UK generally) is so much more expensive than in most other countries, and suggests that the UK could slash costs if it wanted to.
  The headline claim is
  
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• Hyakkō reveals the art of imperfection in Japan House’s label-light exhibition

  02-12-2025 13:00 via ianvisits.co.uk
  A static sushi conveyor belt of handmade domestic craftwork has gone on display in central London, celebrating the makers of Japan.Japan has long been associated with a rich culture of craft, with many practices such as urushi (lacquerware) and metalwork being passed down through generations, often as the result of strict apprenticeships.
  However, in the 1920s, the mingei (folk craft) movement drew attention to the beauty of handcrafted, utilitarian objects.  Integral to this philosophy was
  
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