Slashdot Mirror
UK 4G Coverage Worse Than In Romania and Peru, Watchdog Finds (theguardian.com)
Britain's National Infrastructure Commission has said in a major new report that the country's mobile phone coverage is worse than that in Albania, Panama, Peru and Romania, as users are able to connect to the internet barely half the time. The report also found that the country's data volumes are four to five times less than the U.S. and Japan. The Guardian reports: The commission, chaired by Andrew Adonis, the crossbench peer and former Labour minister, said the government must now ensure that the next generation of 5G spectrum does not have the failures that dog 4G coverage. "Britain is 54th in the world for 4G coverage, and the typical user can only access 4G barely half the time," Adonis said. "Our 4G network is worse than Romania and Albania, Panama and Peru. Our roads and railways can feel like digital deserts and even our city centers are plagued by not spots where connectivity is impossible. That isn't just frustrating, it is increasingly holding British business back as more and more of our economy requires a connected workforce." In a list of recommendations, it argued there should be a new dedicated cabinet minister in charge of the UK's digital future, ensuring mobile connectivity is competitive with the rest of the world. On top of that, it called for ministers and Ofcom, the media regulator, to work together to ensure a set of standards known as a universal service obligation no later than 2025. The crucial priorities for coverage are key rail routes, major roads such as motorways and all towns and cities, Adonis said.
UK Worse than in Romania and Peru, Watchdog finds.
Service =
Healthcare
Public Transport
Education
Basic Reading Skills
Xenophobia
Distrust in political system
Shall we make this a game?
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Maybe another Brexit will solve the issue?
If it's that bad why don't the card skimmers and pip-players all fuck off home?
British dental practice. Stiff upper lip because of what's hiding underneath.
This all happened to Britain while they were a member of the EU.
EU membership obviously did not help.
Because you can't play Clash of Clans while sitting in traffic? Because you can't stream porn while on the Tube?
What benefit does ubiquitous 4G actually provide, other than helping the impatient or attention-deficit crowd?
With the snooper's charter and digital rights acts, there'll be nothing to look at on your snazzy 4G connection anyway - the government will have censored it all.
Romania is one of the most advanced countries with regard to internet infrastructure. I'm paying 30 euros for a guaranteed 90/90 Mbit optical cable business connection, including 8 IPv4.
Residential net speeds are mostly Gbit, with actual Gbit p2p transfer rate within city limits, and 100 Mbit outside (nation wide, essentially only limited to the bandwidth of the server one is accessing).
Also IPv6 adoption advanced furthest, several of the solutions are being discussed internationally for wider adoption (don't ask me details, don't know much about it - but I'm a Romanian living in Germany with friends in tech management of one of the two largest Romanian providers).
It's not like an "Infrastructure Commission" isn't independent of building more infrastructure, now is it?
Europe is so far behind the US in wireless technology it isn't even funny. They don't even produce any phones. So backward!
When your existing infrastructure;
1. Is non-existent or uncommon.
2. Is not an incremental step to what is commonly found everywhere in the country already.
3. Does not involve entrenched billion dollar businesses milking the status-quo.
4. Is not governed by decades of government regulation.
So yeah...when countries with far worse infrastructure or practically none get more infrastructure they get the best available making established countries seem to lag. -just look at the UK's train system in comparison to any country that had the luxury adding train infrastructure in the last 30-40 years.
The UK has loads of old infrastructure, established commercial bodies and eye watering regulation. -keeping that in mind (and ignoring the idiocy of brexit) the UK is doing very well.
A 'singular oddity' is an event that cannot be explained and only happens when you are alone.
They have no need for good coverage anyway - after all, it's just a little island.
Any British citizens with a desire to experience our extremely fast and cheap internet are welcome to Romania. Please settle Teleorman and vote liberal. Thank you.
Virtuals don't count, only mobile providers with their own cell towers and national coverage.
Is it a duopoly by any chance?
Fret not, dear chaps, soon you'll have the worst 5G coverage, too!
Ok, UK is 54th in the world according to some league table that doesn't seem to get fully published in either of the sources linked in the summary. So who are the 53 higher ranked countries?
For those who couldn't be bothered searching, the full table is here.
I live in a forest. I'd be happy with 3 G. Or 2G. Or 1G, Or just the ability to send and receive a text. Maybe even once a day.
EDL foaming at the mouth at the sight of the headline, having heart attack after reading Albania in TFS.
There's a reason why countries who strongly regulate their telecom sector have on average better service than those who naively believe that the invisible hand of the market will take care of everything.
That hand is invisible because most of the time it's up the consumer's behind.
France, terrible 4g coverage and horrid internet speeds! .4 up
France never went to broad band (cable) thus almost all of the country (expect a very few inner city's with fiber) is stuck with crap DLS. The best available is southern France is 10 down and
Europe's vaunted high speed internet is often discussed in the US, the reality is much different.
Because every time there's an article on US cell service seemingly anywhere on the net, the Brits are always smugly bragging about how "we only pay $X per month for cell service in OUR tiny country". Now we have another reason that explains why.
There are several studies ranking different countries and their mobile connectivity, for their report they just chose the absolute worst.
Also the implication that no 4G connection counts as 'no Internet' is a rather dubious claim.
Well, in Britain I used to have a mobile plan with 200min/unlimited text/500MB for 6.90GBP. Since I've moved to Canada, the cheapest decent plan I could find is 40CAD. Sure it has more of everything but my usage for the last month was 44min/19text/53MB. Nevermind, I am sure Canada is a world leader in 4G! Hurray!
Who are these lucky people for whom 4G works half the time!?
The only places 4G - or mobile web access at all for that matter - works for me is pretty much inside an O2 shop.
Anywhere else - central London, Greater London, in the country, in my house, in other city and town centres - no chance. On the train - ha, that's a good one.
I'm still not entirely convinced there isn't a problem with the 4G hardware on my iPhone. Been in a O2 shop twice now to check it - as I say, works fine in their shops, but hardly anywhere else.
Discussed it many times with O2 online chat support. Oh boy, what a frustrating experience. ("Support: Please reset your network settings on the phone, then Internet will work. Me: My problem is not that it doesn't work - it's just slow [ bangs head on wall etc ] ")
Never did get round to taking it to an Apple store to get it checked - always felt Apple would say it was O2's problem.
Just an anecdote FWIW.
Here in the Netherlands, people from Poland come to do seasonal agricultural work.
They often legally make less than our local minimum wage, because they are officially employed by a Poland-based contracting agency.
So, some native people are upset, because they cannot legally compete with them, at least not on wage costs (unless they get employed by a comparable Polish agency).
Once, I worked in such a setting, a Dutch company with Dutch owners etc.etc. But, all work instructions were given in German, because most workers were Poles who don't understand Dutch. Nevermind I as a native Dutchman found it hard to follow.
So, language barriers are not always an issue it seems.
It wasn't long ago that England was the most powerful nation in the world.
What many people don't realize is that if England were a state, it would be 51st, below Mississippi, in terms of economic output. (England is 83.9% of the United Kingdom by population.) If you expanded your measurement to include Great Britain (the UK excluding Northern Ireland), Great Britain would be 50th, right above Mississippi.
What I expect, as the UK completes its separation from the EU, is for the kingdom's role in the world to fall to something more in line with the role of one US state. As such, I'd expect to see measures indicative of economic strength like this one to lag. I'd actually be quite delighted to welcome the United Kingdom to the United States. The only thing that the British people would lose in joining the United States as our 51st state would be titles of nobility.