Weekly Wrap: Driverless taxis get a green light in London

“This is a solution to a problem that we don’t have,” said Steve McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association. “And it brings with it a plethora of problems that we don’t need.”

Speaking on BBC radio, he referred to traffic congestion, lost property, wheelchair users, and practical aspects of running a taxi service as issues that an AI, however well-trained, might never be able to handle.

There’s a second problem-we-don’t-need dimension to this launch.

Currently, UK start-up Wayve’s cars need less connectivity than the industry predictions suggest. The London trial is driver-supervised, meaning that a licensed driver sits in every vehicle. Wayve says connectivity is mainly for over-the-air updates, fleet management and diagnostics, not live remote control of driving.

However, Wayve, Uber and Stellantis announced a partnership in June to scale driverless robotaxis globally, removing the in-vehicle driver and replacing it with remote oversight in case of emergency.

This remote oversight is required by law under the Automated Vehicles Act 2024. Any authorised “no-user-in-charge” service must have a licensed operator who provides remote oversight and can detect and respond to problems during the journey.

Swap the person in the seat, who needs no wireless connection at all, for a legally required remote-oversight operator, and the need for wireless connectivity increases.

That oversight doesn’t run constantly, of course. Google-owned Waymo, which already uses this model in the US, describes it as “fleet response”. This means the vehicle remains under autonomous control and only requests human input when it encounters an ambiguous situation. This might be an unusual road layout or an unexpected obstruction that the car’s AI can’t resolve.

However, the connection must be reliably available at all times for that possibility, ready to carry live video and telemetry when needed. Industry estimates put that uplink at up to 20 Mbps per vehicle once engaged. A US Senate inquiry into Waymo, Tesla, Zoox, Aurora, Motional, May Mobility and Nuro confirmed in 2026 that every major operator relies on some form of remote operator.

That traffic and the availability of network capacity are what’s concerning in London. The regulator Ofcom’s “Connected Nations” report last November said the capital was one of the weakest performers in terms of 5G of any major UK city, with mobile networks already strained by congestion.

It’s also a fair bet that the moments the AI system needs most remote-controlled help will be at busy junctions, unusual road layouts, and places where there is dense traffic. Imagine a driverless car near Buckingham Palace around the time of the Changing of the Guards. These are exactly the moments and places London’s network is under the most pressure from everyone’s phones.

Before a new category of always-connected vehicle is commercialised, it’s worth asking whether the network has room for it.

Here’s what else PolicyTracker has covered this week:

• Germany’s PMSE users left uncertain about military use of UHF band
• Emergency direct-to-device deployments in Jamaica and Venezuela show how satellite can provide a rapid fallback option
• New Zealand is using the opportunity of expiring licences in the 2.6 GHz and 2.3 GHz bands to redistribute spectrum
• The US NTIA says its plans to study the 4.4 GHz band for 6G have been approved
• Indonesia completes major auction of 700 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum