By the end of 2024, I believe.
London Underground were slow adopters, especially in tunnels, because for a long time they (rightly or wrongly) claimed "security" as a reason not to do it.
I have Community fibre 1GB. I got it soon after it became available in my area. So it's not available to everyone. You can find a map and postcode checker here: https://fairinternetreport.com/Community-Fibre
> my experience with London's local wifi was trash
Community fibre, in my case, is residential wired internet. The wire is an optic fibre, it's in the name. Yes they supply a router for a Wifi AP and some ethernet ports but fundamentally, they supply the wires, the WiFi is not their domain.
IDK if they supply internet to small businesses such as "Coffee shops and hotels" but quite often the nature of the business means that configuring it well isn't a high priority.
Community Fibre are one of those cherry-picking networks (same as Hyperoptic and others of their ilk).
They only go for the low-hanging fruit, i.e. large residential blocks in BT monopoly areas where BT have not yet rolled out fibre.
Sometimes they'll stray from that, but mostly that's how those companies operate.
I currently have an OpenReach 900/100 connection so I'm not in much of a hurry but CF do seem to be a lot better than HyperOptic
The cafe might prefer several customers, to one who sits for two hours with one drink.
(Your first question is answered in the first line of the article.)
Snooping around for free WiFi feels like a fairly noughties kind of an activity.
Finding sockets: now that's the real trick if you don't have a laptop with a big and/or hotswappable battery or very good power management.