First Ever Independent 4G Coverage Map of Newcastle and North Tyneside

Technical UK consultancy firm FarrPoint has just created something rather special – the “first ever” independent 4G mobile (broadband) coverage map of Newcastle and South Tyneside. The study was designed to “comprehensively” map out the region’s mobile phone “not spots” in order to help the local authority to improve connectivity.

If there’s one thing that most people can probably agree on, it’s that the maps of mobile network coverage produced by EE (BT), Vodafone, O2 (VMO2) and Three UK are not always the most accurate or useful. In fairness, mobile signals can easily be impact by all sorts of changes in the surrounding environment (weather, new buildings, tree growth etc.), so it’s not an easy thing to get right.

Similarly, attempting to produce an independent map of such signals is arguably even harder, since you’d need to go out and physically record how the signals change as you move around – that’s a lot of work. Nevertheless, this is precisely what FarrPoint set out to do after Newcastle City Council (NCC) identified that this was one of the big concerns among local people (they did this by analysing social media comments).

Cllr Joyce McCarty said:

“While we’ve made significant progress in increasing the availability of fixed broadband infrastructure, the levels of mobile coverage has been less clear due to the way it’s reported by mobile network operators, meaning it’s been almost impossible to identify any partial or total ‘not spots.’

This piece of work rectifies that, accurately reflecting the on-the-ground experience that residents and businesses are likely to receive. It clearly shows that mobile coverage is not currently maintaining pace with developments, with areas of newer homes less likely to enjoy good signal than our more established communities.

Having this fresh understanding will now allow us to engage with the networks in order to collaboratively try and improve coverage for everyone.”

Using a vehicle mounted unit, FarrPoint drove more than 1,800 miles, measuring real-world 4G signal strength for the main four operators over a 2-month period and collecting almost 130,000 data points. The results of this survey were used to “accurately” map outdoor and indoor 4G coverage (using a minimum threshold of -105 decibel milliwatts (dBm) for outdoor service and -95dBm for indoor service – Ofcom’s measure).

The majority of the survey area was found to have outdoor coverage from all four networks, yet in some areas, such as Woolsington, or where recent developments have taken place to the west and north of Newcastle, signal was more limited. Indoor coverage followed a similar pattern, however up to 10% of the city was potentially found to have no adequate 4G signal, including parts of areas like Dinnington, North Gosforth, Chapel Park, Lemington, Throckley, and West Jesmond.

Indoor 4G mobile coverage map

FarrPoint say they have also successfully completed a similar mobile coverage map for West Sussex County Council. The big downside for consumers is that there’s no easy way for ordinary folk, that we’re aware of, to access this data and interact with it, which is a shame. But hopefully NCC will be able to make some constructive use of it.

Meanwhile, doing this across the whole of the UK would probably be far too slow and expensive, with the data quickly becoming out-of-date – as networks are constantly being changed / upgraded. Credits to James for spotting the news.