Consultancy firm FarrPoint has today posted the results of a recent survey they conducted alongside the Connecting Cheshire (Digital Cheshire) partnership to measure 4G mobile (mobile broadband) coverage across the region’s “main transport routes” (i.e. motorways, A and B roads), which reveals a mixed picture of network reach.
The survey itself focused on measuring 4G connectivity on motorways, as well as A and B roads across local authorities of Cheshire West, Chester, Cheshire East, Warrington and Halton. Over 1600km of road were surveyed during this research. Overall, the mobile operator with the best coverage outdoors* on A and B roads was O2 (VMO2), whilst EE (BT) was found to be the best on motorways.
A good quality outdoor 4G service was recorded from one or more operators on 99% of motorways and 94% of A and B road across the region, but the picture changes when you look at multiple operators at the same time. In this case, some 54% of the motorways had coverage outdoors from all four mobile operators (EE, O2, Three UK and Vodafone), falling to 36% of A and B roads across Cheshire.
Advertisement
Mike Dugine, Digital Sector Specialist at Connecting Cheshire said: “Whilst 4G coverage is relatively good in most parts of Cheshire, some signal gaps remain an issue for residents, businesses and visitors in the region. The results from this mobile survey will help us make data-driven decisions on where to direct investment for improving mobile connectivity within our region. We believe that it is important that such decisions are supported with strong independent evidence.”
This is coverage on MAIN ROADS. Coverage ‘in building’ is going to be considerably worse and is where the majority of traffic from personal User Equipments is originated from.
Bearing in mind VMO2 has a National coverage obligation to cover 98% of UK premises (indoors), it is reasonably clear that they are going to be quite a bit short of where they need to be