Mobile Phone Technology

What a mobile phone customer requires is coverage for their phone on their network at places they visit. To achieve this the mobile phone operators each have to cover as much of the UK as possible. It is no good for a customer if their network has no coverage when another network does have coverage.

Two measures are often used for coverage namely:

• coverage by population
• coverage by geographical area

A mobile operator needs to maximise these figures for both their 4G and 5G networks. The first measure (by population) is easier to achieve than by geographical area. Currently all networks have near 100% coverage by population for their 4G network, although the 5G coverage is lagging behind. For geographical coverage the operator figues are much less than the figures for population coverage, and the 5G coverage is really only towns and cities in the UK.

In the difficult geographical areas, which may have few homes but may have businesses that need coverage or have visitors, there is some sharing of resources such as the shared rural network scheme.

Each mobile operator provides a map on their web site that shows the coverage in an aras and indeed over the whole of the UK. These maps are based on a number of observations at key locations and the map enhanced using computer simulation. In reality in areas of marginal coverage the actual coverage may be better or worse due to geographical or structural features. Also atmospheric conditions also can affect the coverage seen by an individual phone.