UK flagging behind in mobile performance
January 6, 2025
Brits have been told that the reason for increasingly poor mobile phone signal at large events across the UK could be due to cellular capacity. Experts from TelephoneSystems.Cloud have warned that a lack of investment in the industry has resulted in telecommunications infrastructure not being upgraded quick enough to keep up with the ever-increasing demand.
Mobile phone users across the UK will be familiar with the issue of not being able to get any, or very limited, mobile phone signal at large capacity events such as a football match or concert. It’s easy to point the blame at a mobile network provider for poor performance, but the actual cause of the issues are most likely due to the capacity of that particular network, suggests TelephoneSystems.Cloud.
With a lot of phones in a relatively small area competing for the attention of a network’s telephone mast, a network can reach cellular capacity as the demand on bandwidth becomes higher. And during these events, a network can become further strained as people are more likely to be using data-heavy applications such as photo and video sharing apps.
But whilst cellular capacity can be blamed as the cause for poor mobile phone signal at large capacity events, it does not excuse the UK for its overall poor mobile phone performance when compared to similar sized countries.
Mobile phone performance across the UK has continued to get worse, with the UK dropping four places to 53rd place in the latest Speedtest Global Index, which ranks the mobile performance of countries around the globe.
The UK is currently wedged between Thailand and Azerbaijan in the rankings; two countries that the UK would be expected to be performing significantly better than. But a combination of lack of investment, poor infrastructure, planning regulations, and even security risks, have all contributed to the UK’s overall poor performance.
Juliet Moran, technical director at TelephoneSystems.Cloud, commented: “The UK’s poor performance in global rankings when it comes to our mobile phone performance is a clear indicator of the lack of investment that the industry has received. With population numbers rising and there being a clear increase in network demand, it’s evident that we need the infrastructure to keep up. You hear of so many people frustrated by the mobile phone signal they receive, especially when they are out at large events like a music festival, or even out shopping on a busy Saturday in their local city centre. Planning regulations don’t necessarily help as well, as it can be a challenge to get the approval to put up the 50m-tall 5G masts that are required. But we need better infrastructure to cope with the demands, and that means more investment is needed if the UK doesn’t want to fall even further behind.”
“It’s important that the government gets the 6G rollout done smoothly when it becomes available in the 2030s. Due to various security risks and the ban on Huaiwei technology, the UK was a year or two behind other countries for the 5G rollout, and we are still feeling the impacts of that now as our 5G is poor in comparison to other G7 countries. The government has pledged an initial £100m for 6G research, so let’s hope that moving forward there is more focus on the industry and better investment, so the UK can start to climb global rankings and be compared favourably to our counterparts,” concluded Moran.