Vodafone UK – Mobile Cover Improved in Northumberland After 3G Closure

The Northumberland County Council (NCC) in Northern England and mobile operator Vodafone UK have revealed that, thanks to the aid of bin lorries, they’ve been able to confirm that their network coverage improved in the county after 3G was retired in February 2024. Mobile signals now reach 92% of the county (up from 89%) and mobile broadband speeds improved by 10%.

The idea of using bin collections to map 4G and 5G mobile coverage is one that has only recently started to become popular (examples here and here). In this setup, bin collection vehicles are installed with four off-the-shelf smartphones using software from Streetwave on top, which run continuous tests of signal coverage and network performance (once every 20 metres in rural areas and 5m in urban areas) as the vehicles go about their routes.

The mapping data this produces is typically much more accurate than the flaky estimates of mobile coverage that are so often produced by network operators and Ofcom. The NCC are now using this data to help investigate options, such as small cells, for plugging some of the highly localised coverage gaps that have been revealed.

Councillor Wojciech Ploszaj said:

“It’s very rural. Something like 95% of the population lives in about 5% of Northumberland. We’ve got places where there is no mobile connectivity and very, very limited broadband as well.”

As for Streetwave, the company has already conducted similar bin lorry-based surveys in 30 local authority areas during 2024 (many of these are ongoing) and they’re now in discussions with another 50 councils. “It’s not a one-and-done hobbyist project. We’re on the path to mapping the whole country”, said George Gibson, one of Streetwave’s co-founders.

However, we should point out that Vodafone doesn’t specifically say what the figure of 92% actually represents (i.e. is it 2G or 2G+4G+5G etc.), and their report naturally excludes similar data for other operators like EE, O2 and Three UK.