Ofcom maps reveal extent of mobile notspots

Is it me...

...or does the granularity of the Ofcom maps make them pretty much useless?

Let's have some proper data reporting. Let's see the relative signal strength and data rate (the two aren't always synonymous) of all major networks at street level.

By PaulOckenden on 2 Nov 2011

No Mr Ockendon. it is not you. I am with O2 & I cannot get a 3g signal at any premesis I visit. If it wasn't for wifi there would be no point in me having a smartphone.

By Alperian on 2 Nov 2011

Opportunities ...

Ofcom could make a massive improvement for everyone simply by mandating network fallback so if a handset cannot get a signal on its home network it can transparently use any of the others with appropriate inter-network financial transfers.

Also there should be something that can be done with public wi-fi provision to off-load some of the data traffic, again with automatic fallback.

Some joined-up thinking is required here!

By JohnAHind on 2 Nov 2011

@JohnAHind

Your suggestion will be roundly ignored by Ofcom as it is far too sensible.

If you are right it means that they have been wrong for years, and no civil servants has ever admitted to making a mistake.

By tirons1 on 2 Nov 2011

@JohnAHind

I think that's an inspired suggestion. I might even use that as a basis of a blog post - with all due credit afforded to yourself, of course.

Barry Collins
Editor

By Barry_Collins on 2 Nov 2011

@JohnAHind et al

VERY sensible, therefore not going to happen :-(

As a rural dweller I actually get reasonable landline Broadband (c 5Meg) but zero, zilch, nada, NO mobile connections.

Sadly your sggestion would not benefit me at home, though it would help a lot around and about - which is surely the point of a 'MOBILE' 'phone?

Anyway I'll take your suggestion and add an affordable, multi network femtocell. For those who don't know, Femtocells allow you to make calls andutilise the 3G data(sometimes 2g as well) capabilities on your 'phone via your landline broadband connection.

Vodafone (illiterate sods) offer their 'Sure Signal' box which costs about £50, and is a price I'd pay to have a usable Smartphone.

So Ofcom should enforce the availability of femtocells for us poor buggers in serious notspots.

They must mandate that the networks stop incessantly 'trialing' femtocells, and make them available at a sensible price. If Vodafone can do it so can the rest!

By wittgenfrog on 2 Nov 2011

nice idea @JohnAHind

But what's to stop a new entrant setting up a new network with just a couple of masts in central London and falling over to other carriers everywhere else?

Would need careful regulation.

By PaulOckenden on 2 Nov 2011

@PaulOckenden

Surely all this stuff is done by computers?

If a 'carrier' had only 2 masts then whatever traffic was offloaded onto the other networks would be easily itemised by those carriers and charged accordingly.

Similarly all thos dumb computers will be sitting around recording who's carrying what for whom and can re-bill one another as appropriate quaterly. monthly, whatever.

I do agree that care will be needed to ensure equity, but then there won't be a shortage of data on which to base that equity!

By wittgenfrog on 2 Nov 2011

My point was that there would be no reason to build / improve infrastructure if networks could just leach off each other.

At the moment network quality (or lack of) is an important differentiator. But why would networks invest in new masts if they didn't have to?

By PaulOckenden on 2 Nov 2011

@PaulOckenden

They would invest in new mast if it became more financially rewarding to them. I imagine the idea would be that the internetwork billing is not passed along to users, so if a network suddenly finds that one particular area is costing them more in a month to pay out to the other operators than it would to run their own mast then they stump up and fit one instead of saying there isn't enough demand in that area.

By Shuflie on 2 Nov 2011

On the flip side, if one of the networks sees an area with almost zero coverage then they fit a mast and their competitors help to pay for it. Guess who the winner is in all this.

By Shuflie on 2 Nov 2011

@PaulOckenden

First, 3-G networks require an expensive national licence from Ofcom, so it would not be economical to run a small-scale network.

Second, I did specify "suitable financial transfers" and Ofcom would have to set the charge so it was uneconomical to deliberately under-provision your network.

And it would actually be more attractive than at present to fill "notspots" because the network doing this would attract traffic and revenue from a wider pool of customers.

By JohnAHind on 2 Nov 2011

@JohnAHind

Very sensible and good idea.
Further to this:
Say I am on O2 and lose 3g, it connects to Vodafone for a short while. Vodafone sends the data bill to O2 and Ofcom some how makes sure it does not get sent to the customer.
Then carriers with the most widespread 3g connections would be getting less bills from competitors.
The carriers would hopefully decide to invest to try and reduce the bills they get and in a perfect world they build 100% coverage :D
We can dream (:

By monotok on 2 Nov 2011

Radical ?

As OFCOM seems to be useless in most respects why not transfer all base stations to them and give them responsibility for providing reliable coverage which they charge the networks for.
Relying on the networks has for years proved useless. Like others the only way to get any reliable signal where I live is a vodafone sure signal that I have to pay for on top of the normal tariff.

By rjhaxeld on 3 Nov 2011

OK, fair points, but it's the "Ofcom some how makes sure it does not get sent to the customer" that I don't quite get now. The customer will ALWAYS end up paying. If not via a roaming charge then via increased charges elsewhere. The mobile networks aren't charities.

As for transferring the masts to Ofcom, I think that's mental! @rhhalexd says "Relying on the networks has for years proved useless" - I think you couldn't be further from the truth. Compare the UK's mobile provision to countries with state operated networks, or where there's only a couple of operators. Despite our sub-optimal geography we actually have a number of pretty good mobile systems here in the UK.

Oh, and if you really want to roam between the networks there ARE ways of doing it. It's not cheap, but it IS possible.

By PaulOckenden on 3 Nov 2011

Not so radical!

If you have a sim card from another country you can roam over the whole of the UK and the roaming charges appear on your bill, so why all the fuss about setting up roaming here in the UK among all the carriers, they already have the infrastructure in place, all they need to do is to agree the chargin rate between themselves. Ofcom needs to say to them all, just do it and make the mobile experiance in the UK so much better, so that every one will get a very good signal where ever they are in the UK.

By gtdawson on 3 Nov 2011

Meaningless figures again.

Average speed? Which "average" are we talking about? The mean, or the median, or the mode?

I'm betting it is the mean, which is fairly meaningless (no pun intended). It will be heavily affected by the relatively few people getting 100Mbps. That will give an 'average' figure which is greater than what the majority of people get. It is a bit like working out the 'average' pay in a small company where the boss takes home £100k, and the other 10 guys on the shop floor earn £25k each. So the 'average' pay of £32k is pretty meaningless to most of the people in the company.

The median figure, the middle value of the spread of data (i.e. the speed you would have if as many people had a faster connection as had a slower connection), or even the mode (the range of speeds which the greatest number of people get) would be more useful.

By martindaler on 3 Nov 2011

@gtdawson

That is exactly what T-Mobile and Orange have just done. So now my Virgin Mobile phone (a T-Mobile virtual network) happily roams between the two, and my coverage is the better for it. No extra charge of course.

Soon it will have to come about exactly as you suggest. Just like the bank's cash machine networks, you don't have to be too old to remember the days when if you stuck your debit card in the 'wrong' bank's machine you were in for a nasty 'roaming' charge. Then, tentatively, a few banks linked their networks and made a big song and dance about it. And today, well, the old jealously separate networks seem a distant bad memory.

The sooner all the mobile networks work on that same principle the better. Then there will be some incentive for each operator to fill in as many gaps as possible, if they want to be capturing the revenue.

By martindaler on 3 Nov 2011

Not so radical!

If you have a sim card from another country you can roam over the whole of the UK and the roaming charges appear on your bill, so why all the fuss about setting up roaming here in the UK among all the carriers, they already have the infrastructure in place, all they need to do is to agree the chargin rate between themselves. Ofcom needs to say to them all, just do it and make the mobile experiance in the UK so much better, so that every one will get a very good signal where ever they are in the UK.

By gtdawson on 3 Nov 2011

State Infrastructure compared to Private Networks

When last in China, (10 years ago) I found that the GSM Digital networks worked all over china with no black spots, because the Chinese gov used 50 watt and 100 watt masts not 25 watt ones and have an excellent coverage, I was in Kunmin, then Red River, 2 hours by plane west of Hong Kong and 4 hours by car west again, excellent coverage all the way, and yet we get blackspots in London. Still this is 'backwoods' UK, slow broadband (I only get 1.8mg and I live 4 miles from Bedford) and poor phone coverage.

By gtdawson on 3 Nov 2011

Everything Everywhere

Yes, T-Mo and Orange users can now roam between the two networks. And what's happening as a result? Loads of masts are being decommissioned. New not-spots are being created daily. As the networks merge (either completely, as with Everything Everywhere), or virtually (as with the 3/EE MBNL), things will only get worse.

Perhaps the real role for Ofcom is to maintain some level of competition between the networks, and stop them switching off whole swathes of the UK's mobile infrastructure.

By PaulOckenden on 3 Nov 2011

Why is UMA not more prevalent

@PaulOckenden for your upcoming article you may be interested in the little known tech of UMA. Currently only supported by Orange (called "Signal Boost" http://help.orange.co.uk/orangeuk/support/personal
/446693 ), but purports to allow you both voice and data from any Wifi hotspot you can associate with. Requires no extra hardware but does need the phone to be compatible and have the software installed)

By jezmc on 3 Nov 2011

State Infrastructure compared to Private Networks

When last in China, (10 years ago) I found that the GSM Digital networks worked all over china with no black spots, because the Chinese gov used 50 watt and 100 watt masts not 25 watt ones and have an excellent coverage, I was in Kunmin, then Red River, 2 hours by plane west of Hong Kong and 4 hours by car west again, excellent coverage all the way, and yet we get blackspots in London. Still this is 'backwoods' UK, slow broadband (I only get 1.8mg and I live 4 miles from Bedford) and poor phone coverage.

By gtdawson on 3 Nov 2011

State Infrastructure compared to Private Networks

When last in China, (10 years ago) I found that the GSM Digital networks worked all over china with no black spots, because the Chinese gov used 50 watt and 100 watt masts not 25 watt ones and have an excellent coverage, I was in Kunmin, then Red River, 2 hours by plane west of Hong Kong and 4 hours by car west again, excellent coverage all the way, and yet we get blackspots in London. Still this is 'backwoods' UK, slow broadband (I only get 1.8mg and I live 4 miles from Bedford) and poor phone coverage.

By gtdawson on 3 Nov 2011

@jezmc

Do you read PC Pro? I've written extensively over the past year or two about UMA (Orange), Nextivity Cel-Fi (T-Mobile & Orange), Suresignal (Vodafone), and other mobile blackspot solutions.

In fact we've probably had more coverage on this topic than just about any other mainstream publication.

By PaulOckenden on 3 Nov 2011

@PaulOckenden

You seem to be running two contradictory arguments here: 1. that fallback would incentivate network consolidation; and 2. that fallback would increase costs which would be passed on to customers.

Looked at in the round, this proposal would increase network utilisation therefore reducing costs per unit. Transfer charges between networks would increase costs for networks with poor coverage, but by the same amount it would reduce costs for networks with good coverage. The former could not increase prices to compensate because they are in competition with the latter. So they would be forced to improve their network coverage.

By JohnAHind on 3 Nov 2011

The private sector sucks at infrastructure

Yet again, if further proof were required, the private sector demonstrates how bad it is at doing important, national infrastructure. At the very least the infrastructure should be nationalised and let the private sector do all the customer account stuff.

Mind you, the quality (or lack thereof) of our UK politicians would mean a nationalised network would be run as badly as some of our former public assets. Assets such as BR, who were refused money from Govt. and couldn't borrow to provide more train sets on certain busy lines so they increased the fares to reduce demand. Or GPO/BT, who could supply a phone line in as few as 6 weeks, at one point. Considering how much are politicians love business, they are shockingly bad at actually running the ones they do on our behalf.

By iclbmc1 on 3 Nov 2011