Yes, UK. REST OF EUROPE has better mobe services than you UK readers, what you've always suspected has been proven true – even the weakest mobile networks abroad perform better than some of our best. This is according to German mobile network survey company P3, which this week published solid numbers on mobile network coverage. P3 uses dedicated hardware P3's test equipment And …
While the quality of service is important, it's hard to come to any sensible conclusions without knowing what everyone actually pays. If UK customers pay half as much as German ones, having a slightly lower quality service wouldn't actually be bad (although sadly I suspect reality is closer to the opposite). And for local comparisons, the fact that 3 gives unlimited 4G to everyone at no extra cost makes them look a lot more attractive than a comparison of the raw numbers might suggest. Sure, EE have better 4G service (because they were granted an early monopoly for no good reason and continue to benefit from that head start), but your wallet is going to know about it if you actually want to use it.
"While the quality of service is important, it's hard to come to any sensible conclusions without knowing what everyone actually pays. If UK customers pay half as much as German ones, having a slightly lower quality service wouldn't actually be bad (although sadly I suspect reality is closer to the opposite)."
Quite. Unlike the UK, prices and deals in Germany don't encourage mobile use to replace landlines and many of my German colleagues were not using mobile data at all.
Nice to see they included some Scottish <span class="strike">pubs</span> locations, although I'm curious what testing was done in Wales and N. Ireland. More rural areas could be interesting too, I'd be curious how UK mobile networks in less built up areas compared with that in the rest of Europe since coverage is something that's been made a priority here
Oh you don't have to go far into the sticks to find areas with pitiful signal.
Out here in Essex, only a few minutes from the M25/M11, there are towns and villages where even having access to EE and O2 won't get you a guarantee of anything useful. Occasionally you'll manage to get a bit of 2G data, but TBH, you might as well have no connection for all the use that is.
And that's outside, standing in the road with your arm in the air!
Here here, without giving too much away, I'm living 4 miles away from an inconsequential town 40 miles from London; Believe me mbb is dire. Interestingly (I've tried a few) three provides the most reliable connectivity, a co-resident had to switch from EE to three because her shiny new andoid phone did nothing of use except make phone calls.
One important metric they've missed is the percentage of incoming calls succeeding. My experience with O2 is that an awful lot of incoming calls don't connect. I get voicemail messages without my phone ever ringing, even when I'm sat at my desk and the phone has four bars of signal.
For anyone running a business from their mobile, missing a call from a client can be a deal-breaker. This is particularly the case for small businesses with many clients: mobile hairdressers, painters & decorators, etc.; but it's also very frustrating when you're job-hunting and expecting calls from potential offers.
"but it's also very frustrating when you're job-hunting and expecting calls from potential offers"
There are far more amusing ways to trash potential employment opportunities by phone. Many years ago, long before mobile phones were commonplace, I was at home enjoying a drink with mates, expecting one more to arrive or call. The phone rang. "That'll be John" thinks me.
"International Rescue, Virgil speaking"
"Oh. Ahhh. Err, my name is Joe Shithead of Scumbucket Recruitment Consultants"
Are you using an iPhone perchance? Had a number of my customers (all over the country) reporting the same problem, all them iPhone users. Also, try TuGo - if you're sat at your desk, you'll have wifi and TuGo will route calls using that instead so you won't miss the calls. There are options...
No, am one of the fabled WinPho users. Combined with the fact that I'm on GiffGaff means that TuGo is about as useful as the proverbial tea pot!
Have invested in a BoostBox though and that works brilliantly! O2 missed a trick and should have bundled one of them in each of their Home Routers when providing broadband!
Average revenue per user (ARPU) is much lower than £30 - remember that as an end-user that includes VAT, and the carrier has to provide you with a nice shiny phone for that price too. That £1.5million per day is supporting the fastest rollout of a mobile (4G) network ever in the world, it's also paying for complete overhaul of all 2G and 3G services and it's paying for guaranteed 98% indoor 4G coverage by the end of 2017. O2 is the only carrier brave enough to accept that requirement, and is the only carrier in the UK to have CAS(T) Certification too. So ner ner nerrr nerrr.
I'd rather a slower, reliable connection that fast connections that drop stuff. I was in a course last year in an out of the way area, for about a week. Repeated failed connections to get e-mail turned out to nearly cost me a small fortune in extra data charges.
It didn't matter that the transfer failed, the repeated attempts just kept happening and ramping up the bill because I was still paying for the failed transactions..
Who gives a hoot about HOW it was tested as long as it is consistent testing across the countries.
If all testing is equal (car, backpack, carrier pigeon) and UK still comes in with a very low ranking, then the UK is crap and all that money we throw at mobile operators is simple wasted by them. And OFCOM as per all QUANGOS is just as pointless as ever.
We don't use different concrete in our buildings, or tarmac in our roads and we don't have different air than Europe (unless someone now points out there is a different section of stubborn UK Air that slows down radio waves) We are not flatter than Holland and we are not 'pointier' than Austria, S Germany so Geography is out.
So it has to be provision by Voda, EE, O2 etc and how much they actually get their tech to work. Which is proven now to be, badly.
Secondly, I don't care about 14 cities. I live in a town with poor reception. 98% coverage, as long as you stand at the end of my drive with your arm in the air. EE and Voda are both just as bad.
The uk does have an excess of NIMBY, RF hypersensitive, luddite local councils and communities and individuals.. Witness on here the vitriol when some firm suggests covering the london underground.
Not making an excuse for the lack of, or poor performance of operator investment, planning or engineering though...
Disclaimer... I am in that industry but not in uk or eu, thankfully.
"Witness on here the vitriol when some firm suggests covering the london underground."
Until mobile apps came along this was because:
1: The underground is so bloody noisy that you wouldn't be able to hear the other party
2: The underground is so bloody noisy that you'd have to yell louder than Dom Joly to be heard by the other party.
Nobody wanted to be sat next to THAT in a subsurface tunnel.
Another +1 for Spain here.
Although my Vodafone Spain bills are easily higher than my Three UK ones, the coverage is much better. I get 4G in a lot of places now too, down on the Costa del Golf.
My only complaint, besides the cost, would be that the monthly data caps don't reflect the speeds. The highest mobile one has a 6 gig cap which could easily be munched through with 4G speeds. The MiFi tariffs aren't much better, 10 gig is the highest. There's no such thing as unlimited, as far as I've seen. (If anyone knows, let me know as my contract is due up in January!)
Yup, ~60 Euros gets you unlimited voice & texts, about 12Gb of data per month as well as a couple of hours voice and a couple of hundred Meg data whilst roaming.
And that's for full fat, there are the cheaper "low-cost" alternatives too.
France has always been pretty good for service & coverage.
"Evesham is a tiny little shithole, Leeds is not tiny or little..."
As somebody who has lived adjacent to both, let me clarify: Evesham is a pleasant little market town. You can be in and out in a few minutes. Leeds (and its binary twin, Bradford) are a huge, dirty metropolitan wasteland fit only for testing high yield nuclear weapons.
And London, population 7375, is the smallest city in England.
Like London, Greater Manchester is much bigger than just the Manchester City Council area, it has a population of 2.7 million, making it the second largest city after Greater London with a population of 8.2 million.
Greater Manchester is a metropolitan and ceremonial county that encompasses more than one city, so you can't call it "the second largest city after London". With a population of 2.685 million, it's less populous than the West Midlands (Greater Birmingham) at 2.738 million. With an area of 1,276km^3 it's smaller than West Yorkshire (Greater Leeds) at 2,029km^3 or South Yorkshire (Greater Sheffield) at 1,552km^3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ceremonial_counties_of_England
The only measure where Manchester comes second to London is for it's own self-importance... (ducks for cover!)
If we're talking about who has the most populous urban wasteland outside the M25, the West Midlands county is very slightly larger than Greater Manchester. 2.783m Brummie and related troglodytes, compared to 2.702m Manc and related troglodytes in 2013 by my reckoning.
Should the Mancs feel that they're being done down, then I'll happily let them kidnap the entire population of Coventry to regain a clear lead in urban criminality.
Leeds certainly fits the category of "big city", though the stats make it look bigger than it is because of the way the city council areas are defined. Leeds City Council covers a large area including outlying towns like Otley (which is obviously not really part of the city of Leeds, it's separated by a fair chunk of green space). Whereas for instance Manchester City Council only covers the most central parts, while areas that are obviously within the same conurbation are parts of different local authorities (Salford, Trafford, etc).
I managed to scrounge an unused monthly contract sim from a relative while on holiday and abused it for a month. It was wonderful!
The three times if lost signal were in the middle of absolutely nowhere and I only realised it had dropped when looking at mu Waze route record and saw some signal loss. The total distance the signal was lost for was about 5Km out of 2970Km.
I can travel the 20 miles from home to work and lose the signal 3 times
The annoying thing is that the NZ tariff was half the UK one (NZD 19 vs. GBP 15) and the NZ one provided twice the service!
Why do you need a survey to enlighten you about this ?
I could have told you this over the years.
OR, for that matter, any person with a phone in the street AND his dog could have confirmed it for you.
And the bigger point is, will this survey make (any) difference as to how the networks will react/redress the situation ?
Report better things, please EL Reg.
We have been sold down the river by the greed of these networks.
With the consolidation of masts, things have gotten even worse. Where I used to get full signal on Three, it is now 2 bars or 3 at the most, with many calls directly to voicemail without ringing.
And no one single entity will take full responsibility for the mess they are creating.
Seriously , where are we heading ?
That's right UK punter, you know which position to assume while 'the man' gives it to you.
PS this page is f*cking funny some times
They use cars to measure network quality. This means they only measure near roads.
Now if you are on a road, and you don't have a chauffeur, you most likely shouldn't use computers as you need to drive.
Much more important would be how well the connectivity is on trains. There you typically have the time to access the Internet. However nobody measures there.
Also you'd need to have different weights for different needs. For example I don't care about having 10 kbit or 10 Mbit, what I care about it having a decent connection with a decent sub second latency so I can use ssh or mosh.
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