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[Bowdon]

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/06/ofcom-ceo-the-6bn-cost-of-truly-universal-uk-mobile-coverage.html

The CEO of Ofcom, Sharon White, yesterday told the Connected Britain event in London that to provide good mobile network (4G etc.) coverage across virtually all of the UK landmass would cost up to around £6 billion and is likely to require some form of cross subsidy.

As previously reported, next year will see the national telecoms regulator auctioning off the 700MHz band (formerly used for Digital Terrestrial TV services) for use by future Mobile technologies (e.g. 5G). The lower frequency of this band makes it ideal for delivering wide geographic coverage, not unlike the 800MHz band before it.

    Sharon White, Ofcom’s CEO, said:

    “This week we have provided technical advice to the government on how they might extend mobile coverage even further.

    As we get beyond 92% of the UK’s geography and potentially towards 100%, increasing coverage means building masts in remote areas with no mobile signal at all.

    Our view is that some form of cross subsidy would be necessary to do this. To keep costs down, there would be a strong case for contracting a single operator to build and operate masts where there are currently none, which all customers could then use.

    How much would it cost? According to our estimates, to provide good mobile coverage across virtually all of the UK landmass would cost up to about £6 billion. That is an approximate number. It would need to be refined as operators gain practical experience in outlying areas. But it helps to illustrate the cost.

    Improving mobile reception is a national priority, and we will continue to work closely with DCMS to explore every available solution.”

[Weaver]

I wonder how good it is in the Highlands. It seems better here than you might expect. They could well have said that the people here just do not matter. My wife had a bad car accident a few years ago, went off the road and ended up, parked in a tree or some thick bushes or something. Luckily she got her phone crawled up the bank to the road and had some signal. Police and ambulance were there really quickly. I was at home stuck in bed and she phoned me to tell me she was ok. She was driving back to the Island from the enormous hospital in Inverness. But thank goodness she had some signal in Srath Carrann.

It may be that you can cover a lot of territory in the Highlands with a basestation stuck on top of a mountain. Perhaps it is more difficult in other parts of Britain but I am not sure why. There are not enough mountains to park base stations in and they do not build enormous towers for some reason. The mobile phone signal is supposed to be really crappy in parts of Staffordshire as discussed in the thread about Janet’s mum. The landscape is gently undulating there, some low hills and some dips, with small forested valleys and beautiful pools. It could be that those dips make things difficult. Perhaps the Highlands are easier because the geology makes sure that everything is on a far more massive scale.

[Chrysalis]

I was thinking earlier that as a BT shareholder what path do I want BT to take, now this isnt a BT investor thread but EE came into the plan so I will mention that bit here, especially as it will also interest Weaver.

So BT now own EE as we all know.

We have areas with scratchy ADSL coverage, so called "not commercially viable" areas for further investment.
I feel BT, especially now legacy voice services are planned for withdrawal should invest in these areas on their mobile platform and offer next gen broadband via 4G (5G when it is launched).  I also feel they need to build more masts, and just keep building until every property in reasonably populated areas has "indoor" mobile signal coverage.

Such mobile packages in these areas like where Weaver lives would have special packages designed to replace fixed line broadband, so e.g. at least as a bare minimum 100 GIG data usage and 40mbit download speeds.  The deployment would cost money but surely its cheaper than upgrading cabled broadband.  If BT could pull this off they could then goto ofcom and say look we have no need for a fixed line voice USO anymore, it can be provided with mobile (and get all the major providers with the same obligation also).

Also like Weaver said I am confused somewhat about the claimed poor coverage, as when in a car driving somewhere, we can be nowhere near any populated area and there is "always" a signal when I check my phone.  Granted its not always 4G, but 2G is always there so voice always works, 3G or 4G is nearly always there but occasionally has gaps.  Yet we get people complaining they need wifi boxes at home because they got no signal at home.  This is what needs addressing and of course what I said above.

[Weaver]

Near Janet’s mum, in Eccleshall, the EE coverage map shows no outside signal for 3G in the southern part of the town, but for 2G and 4G there is outdoor coverage and some areas have indoor coverage too. It is all about the construction of properties orientation and size of windows and so on. If you have mobile-unfriendly construction then you are in big trouble.

My stone walls are 3-6ft thick [!] good luck with that. I live in a converted, upgraded blackhouse+ with double stone wall with peat, sand and loose stone fill in between the two layers of stone walking. It was an incredibly posh blackhouse that is why it is the only one in the village that has survived intact. Unless you are in the right place with respect to the six east-facing windows then you have had it for signal.

I don't think that can be fixed by building masts. People ought to have external antennae that are weather-shielded and placed on the outside of the building, giving a link to an internal LAN and phones need to be able to do telephony over WLAN and over the internet. That latter requirement means that users need routers with proper hardcore QoS.

[Chrysalis]

Ok with that in mind I suppose a reasonable expectation that in normal thickness walls the signal would exist, but they could make devices available for people like yourself to transmit a signal indoors.

Router's been able to work with a mobile signal is the easy part, some are on the market already, and if a major isp like BT rolled out a service using it expecting to power a LAN instead of just a mobile device, then vendors would be lining up to be their next customer.

Bear in mind I can get a signal in my bathroom, it has no window and has 3 walls between it and the outside, likewise I can in the middle of an hospital, so I think its possible to penetrate providing the mast is powerful and close enough.  But maybe the hospital has some kind of special transmitter.

[Weaver]

In many parts of the country, solid stone construction or even solid brick internal walls are common, the farmhouse I grew up in was all brick even internal walls. I think your plan is a good one, provided people did get the external receiver devices. I think it would have to be 5G probably because given that it is shared access, one greedy user might ruin the whole cell unless there were traffic shapers and serving an entire group of people might mean that the guaranteed access speeds were atrocious compared to wired copper or optical links. That is my huge worry about wireless, the unpredictability of it. It might look like it works to begin with then real throughput for some users goes down the toilet. Also (broken record) it must allow wholesaling so as not to create horrible monopolies with no freedom of choice re quality requirements.

Reliability is a worry too, with a massive single point of failure. Our 4G basesstation, which is very close, decides to die the moment there is any kind of electrical storm or power outage. I wish the government would pass a law requiring these operators to have UPS and diesel generators with 4 days worth of juice. This is because in the past extremely bad storms such as January 2005 have wiped out the power grid for that long in the northern part of the Island, although where I am the power was only off for a day or so.

[Chrysalis]

In terms of reliability my mobile service is far more reliable than any fixed line service I have ever had thats for voice and data, so for me the track record speaks for itself.

I dont know the specific of how contention works on 4G with capacity, is the bottleneck backhaul, is it the cell itself?, if its the former, add more backhaul, if its the latter, add more cells.  Its always solvable but as usual it costs money, so this wouldnt be deployed everywhere just in areas like yours with no fixed line alternative.  Provider side QoS if required then yeah sure, but I am glad you like the basics of the idea.

[Weaver]

The reliability thing is that when the basestation or its link fails then it takes out the whole cell. But agree, it does seem very reliable. I do like your idea. They need to be forced to confess what the minimum guaranteed throughput to the internet is and absolutely must be required to wholesale.

[Chrysalis]

Yeah if its done I would like to see it wholesaled just so enthusiasts can get it from someone like AAISP, rather then having a choice of a tech focused dodgy adsl service or nice performing 4g dumbed down consumer service.

If its a reliability concern then redundancy could be added somehow, backup power for power outages that kind of thing, I think one reason I have had reliability is I am pretty sure I am in range of 3 different transmitters.  So all 3 need to go down for me to get an outage.

[Weaver]

I am only in range of one for 3G. Incredibly awful 2G used to be audible from right into of the hill from miles and miles away. Glad you agree with me about wholesaling, that way the likes of Zen and Idnet and so on get a look-in, business-oriented small ISPs have a chance and small business or not so small business can get the clued up networking services that they need not just random web browsing and email for don't-knowhow-it-works-or-what-it-does types. A lot of mobile network operators do offer horrid IP service, some with NAT, no static IP address blocks, censorship on by default with the nanny state deciding that every customer is a mommy and daddy with tiny kiddies not a business and they therefore feel the need to start blocking random stuff with no accountability, such as our national art galleries, women’s abuse charities, suicide prevention services and of course Scunthorpe. The list is endless and secret.

[Westie]

In many parts of the country, solid stone construction or even solid brick internal walls are common, the farmhouse I grew up in was all brick even internal walls.

It's not just old properties that are constructed with significant attenuation to a mobile signal. Modern construction insulation sheets often have foil covering on both sides, and our house has solid block internal walls downstairs, even though it is less than 15 years old.

We too are totally reliant on a single mast for mobile coverage, which can fairly frequently go 'down' for a day.

Our terrestrial TV signal is dependant on a single repeater mast across the valley, with a relatively limited range of Freeview channels, as there is zero coverage from the main transmitters. Consequently, although we were the very first village in the UK to have digital TV, it is impossible to get DAB radio. If/when analogue radio is switched off, most car radios in the village will fall silent!
  Maybe that's a bonus!

But thanks to BDUK, we have great 80/20 FTTC!!

[kitz]

As weaver says, buildings/walls/distance are the problems with mobile signal. 
I'm fine here but signal at my parents house (appx 1 mile away) is dreadful and many a time I've stood by the lounge window or resorted to going outside. Their house is about equidistant to a mast than mine. 

There's also what was the old Plusnet Head Office on Tenter St.. right in Sheffield City Centre.   You couldn't get a mobile signal in that building and I mean absolutely zero.  If you wanted to use your phone you had to go and stand in the porch.   PN at one time were considering putting in some sort of beacon system for mobiles and there was talk of some discussion with Vodafone, but afaik they never did and have since moved location.

[Weaver]

Now I come to think of it, the ceilings in my house too were all done with foil-backed plasterboard, so probably death for wireless LAN.

All the internal walls bar one half-wall are wood panelling, so very transparent and in any case I have a downstairs and an upstairs WAP on 5GHz. There is an enormous porch on the front - southern- end of the house which is made of wood and has a six-foot thick double stone wall separating it from the rest of the house, so that is a disaster, a WLAN blackspot but it only has a downstairs bathroom and washing machine in it so at the moment I just have to leave that as an unsolved problem because running network cable to it would be very awkward unless I used wireless-to-wireless distribution to reach there.

[Chrysalis]

Just found this.

https://www.digitaltveurope.com/2018/02/09/ee-trials-4g-home-broadband-in-the-uk/

If it was EE supplied only would you keep bonded adsl from aaisp over 4g?

[Weaver]

Well, I already have 4G from EE and 3G from AA/AQL/Three and I have a Solwise 4G Router with external antennae. But there is no IPv6, no static IPv4 address block and 3G/4G costs an absolute fortune. Now I can download 1TB for £3.90. So 3G/4G is not even close to being a contender.