Star letter

Sending the wrong signal

In a few podcasts now there has been talk of software as a streaming service, for example discussions around Windows, but what is often overlooked is that the UK’s data network is just not up to this. I work all over the mainland UK in a mobile health clinic; last week was Newcastle and Inverness, this week has been King’s Lynn, Weymouth and now Maidstone, so I am reliant on decent 4G and 5G networks. To help with this I have two contracts on my phone, EE and O2, with the idea being I can use one when the other is not so great. (In practice, that means EE 80% of the time.) But all too often there is no usable signal at all.

Today I am in Maidstone but have no usable 4G or 5G signal on either network, and the same was true in both King’s Lynn and Weymouth. All technically have 4G and 5G, but not where I am actually located in the towns, meaning I’ve not had usable coverage at a single location all week. For the last 45 minutes I’ve been trying to find some urgent information for work (okay, if I’m honest it was “who played Boss Hogg?”), but my phone can’t even open a search page, much less the laptop to do anything more data-hungry.

In a recent podcast Jon rather optimistically said Wi-Fi is everywhere so that solves it, but

Wi-Fi is not an option. For example, right now there are no networks at all, while at other times there are networks but they’re locked with no visitor access. Also, I have an annual account with the purple hotels so beloved of Lenny Henry, but while some of those are good, on other occasions it’s unusably bad and has to be turned off. Wi-Fi is just not widely available enough as a fall-back.

The software companies seem to be trying to sprint in one direction, but the track they are running on hasn’t been built yet. It’s great if someone works in the same place every day or at least always works in a nice office with the infrastructure to support that, but if you’re out and about the UK’s data coverage is absolutely abysmal. I can genuinely get a better mobile data connection in the middle of the Channel Tunnel than the middle of some Birmingham industrial estates, and streaming something like Windows is just pie in the sky that’s never going to happen in my lifetime.

Yes, I could get a mobile Starlink setup, but that means giving Mr Musk money, so that’s not happening.

Adam Jackson

Editor-in-chief Tim Danton replies: Thanks for sharing all this experience, Adam. It’s great to hear what coverage is like around the country, as those coverage maps can occasionally feel like works of fantasy.