Millions lost to poor mobile coverage - survey

Poor mobile phone coverage in Worcestershire is costing hundreds of millions of pounds in lost productivity, a survey has revealed.

The news comes after a project, which began in October, saw signal trackers fitted to bin lorries as a means of mapping the county's mobile signal problems.

It found more than 10% of postcodes in the county did not have useable coverage, contradicting the official Ofcom data, based on reports by mobile phone operators, which says the figure is 0.01%.

The Conservative MP for Bromsgrove, Bradley Thomas, said he would be calling for a parliamentary debate on the issue, which is costing the county £226m a year, councillors were told on Friday.

"Good, strong, stable mobile phone coverage is as essential to connectivity as any other utility," said Thomas.

"We've got to up the ante on the mobile phone companies to make sure that they're aware that the connection in Worcestershire is not as good as they say it is."

Councillor Adam Kent, cabinet member for the economy, said "countless" residents had raised the issue with him.

"We've seen the investment in Worcestershire across broadband, where we've been pushing to get gigabyte coverage for everybody – but at the same time, the mobile phone network seems to have dropped off a cliff," he said.

"We've got to get the actual data that the mobile phone companies are saying is correct, and then really… we've got to lobby government to take the action to get this improved."

George Gibson. from Streetwave, which provided the technology to collect the data, said it was a UK-wide problem.

"Our findings highlight the significant gap between modelled data and actual user experience," he said.

"People deserve to know the truth about their mobile coverage, and this research gives us the evidence to push for real improvements."

Kent said the council was working with operators, but there was a limit to what it could do.

"What we've got now with this data is the evidence," he said. "We've now got to take the evidence to government and we've got to say something is wrong here.

"It's absolutely imperative that data now is used to effect change."

Thomas confirmed he would call for a parliamentary debate on the issue.

"I'm going to be playing my role to hold the government, mobile phone companies and the regulator to account to make sure that the service gets better."

In response to the survey's findings, an Ofcom spokesperson said: "Our current coverage data comes from mobile network operators' predictions, which we recognise may not always match people's real-world experience at a very local level.

"We are working hard to overhaul our mobile coverage checker, which we expect to relaunch later this year with new and improved data to better reflect what people can expect".

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