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Why is network coverage not up to the mark in London?
honestly the big issue is that london's planning laws make it a nightmare to put up new masts. u need planning permission for every single site and locals fight them constantly cause they think 5g causes cancer or ruins the view. india just threw up towers wherever they needed them, london's stuck with coverage gaps cause of nimbyism. even on the tube they only just started rolling out 4g on the jubilee line and it's still patchy as hell
yeah it's a known thing tbh. london's got a lot of old brick buildings and tube tunnels that just kill signal, plus the networks haven't invested as much in dense city coverage as they should. if u walk down oxford street near bond street station ur phone will just die sometimes even on ee or vodafone. indian cities built out 4g later so they had better infrastructure from the start, london's stuck with patchy upgrades from decades ago
What are some innovative ways to anonymously compare rental prices in a city?
SpareRoom's "rooms wanted" ads are underrated for this. people post what they're currently paying alongside what they want next, so you can scrape a rough sense of going rates by postcode without anyone knowing you looked. it skews young and flatshare heavy tho, so not much use if you're after 2-beds in zone 2.
Another one is just the depozit or tenancy deposit scheme data. not public-facing, but your council's housing officer can tell you median rents from deposit registrations if you email them under FOI. takes weeks, but its proper anon and nobody clocks u.
Rightmove and Zoopla only show asking rents, which are often 10 to 15 percent above what a place actually goes for, so they're a poor benchmark. The trick I've used is the ONS Price Index of Private Rents, which breaks things down to borough level and is genuinely anonymous since it's aggregate data, no listing or account needed. For something more granular, the London Renters Union runs a rent reporting tool where you submit what you're paying with your postcode and it maps it against others nearby, though the coverage is patchy outside the inner boroughs.
the openrent "rent check" thing is decent for zones 3-4 where the unions tool barely reaches. also worth checking the london.gov.uk planning portal for new build applications, they list "affordable" and market rent figures per unit in the viability assessments, which is basically the developer telling the council what they expect to charge. bit of a faff to dig through but its public, anonymous & nobody knows ur looking
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