Sign in / up

back to article Size isn't everything when talking mobile performance: The UK's largest cities suck at it

London has again finished towards the bottom of a mobile network performance league of 16 urban areas in the UK – only Birmingham did worse overall. The West Midlands' Coventry came top in RootMetrics' biannual survey of cities and major towns, which took into account call and text performance, as well as data speeds. …

COMMENTS

Post your comment
House rules Send corrections
Add to 'My topics' unstar *
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Capacity planning? We've heard of it...

    Communications companies just figure out what the average data transmission need is over 24 hours, and then plan to meet it ... on average.

    I live in Louisiana, about 70 miles inland from New Orleans and we had quite decent cell phone service until Hurricane Katrina force everyone out of New Orleans - our city's population doubled overnight and the cell phone service crashed, for a month it took about 10-20 minutes to get a phone call through, text messages would normally get through within an hour.

    Sure, this was exceptional but it illustrates that when you live in a city and a lot of new phones arrive then the phone service is going to slow down - in cell tower usage terms, what do the companies consider to be adequate capacity?

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Capacity planning? We've heard of it...

      >> in cell tower usage terms, what do the companies consider to be adequate capacity

      The least needed to keep customers happy enough to not leave.

      That is why competition is absolutely vital in this segment.

      0 0 Reply
  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Backhaul seems to be the issue

    In those places where data is slow, you usually get good 3 or 4G service, so I presume it's backhaul

    0 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Backhaul seems to be the issue

      Signal strength (the bars on your phone) is not an indication of cell capacity at all. So it isn't necessarily backhaul.

      And backhaul is certainly not a problem in urban sprawls like London.

      0 0 Reply
  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How is this allowed?

    London is the most highly subsidised part of the "United" Kingdom. How are companies allowed to give any QOS outside the M25?

    1 3 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How is this allowed?

      London does not make all its money from within the M25. That's like saying Apple makes all its money from Cupertino and so it is "subsidising" the US by paying tax.

      2 0 Reply
  4. Ochib
    Holmes

    NIMBY's

    There was a complaint about lack of mobile signal in leafy Bournville, planning application sumitted for a new telecoms mast and the planning application was turned down based on complains by the locals in Bournville

    6 0 Reply
    1. Chris G
      Reply Icon
      Trollface

      Re: NIMBY's

      I'm with the Nimbys, a much larger antenna should be built in someone else's backyard so that Bourneville can get a decent signal without an ugly mast.

      3 3 Reply
      1. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: NIMBY's

        Guess downvoters just don't get sarcasm.

        0 0 Reply
  5. tiggity Silver badge

    Not exactly exhaustive

    A whole 16 cities / areas covered - feeble coverage of the UK

    Does not include some big urban areas I visit a lot that are dismal and far worse than London (based on my comparative experience of London visits, using 2 different networks)

    1 0 Reply
  6. Jimmy2Cows Silver badge
    WTF?

    Coventry came top for something? Living there, I sometimes find that hard to believe :|

    1 0 Reply

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

Forgotten password ?

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like