How Extensive is UK 3G Coverage?

A study of 3G coverage in the United Kingdom, using 44,000 participants, suggests that 3G coverage in the UK is far below the 90 percent coverage claimed by operators.

The test used software on Android devices that measured 3G coverage wherever the phones were. The results found that a 3G connection was only possible for 75 per cent of the time, with dead-spots being recorded in U.K. cities and major towns.

Those findings are not going to surprise anybody who thinks for a minute about "coverage." Mobile service providers design their networks to reach areas based on rules of thumb. They don't actually go inside most buildings in an area to measure received signal. Nor can they physically measure signal in all shadow areas created by terrain, trees or buildings.

So when a mobile operator's coverage map shows an area is covered, that only means signal is adequate, "all other things being within design parameters." You might ask why operators don't simply "crank up the power."

In many cases, they cannot, as they have to comply with licensing requirements, though the bigger issue is network designs the require re-use of frequencies throughout the network. That means, essentially, that in order to avoid interference, towers using the same frequencies have to be located some distance apart from each other. To avoid interference, signal strength also has to be regulated.

Keep in mind that user demand directly affects network design. Areas with heavy usage, such as places major highways and freeways run, major pedestrian zones and so forth, require smaller cell coverage areas, which in turn affects signal strength parameters. If a service provider has to provider more smaller cells, power has to be reduced, compared with other lower-use areas where cells are bigger, and signals are stronger.

Signals strong enough to be usable at most locations within a cell tower's coverage area, but to avoid interference, might not be at a level that works quite so well inside some structures made of concrete or brick, for example. Coverage patterns that work one way in the winter might work differently in the summer, when trees are covered with leaves.

That is why, in some neighborhoods, you see your neighbors out on the front porch talking on their mobile devices.

The point is that it is not surprising that coverage patterns as measured by people who are indoors much of the time will discover lower signal strength than a radio engineer will design, and that on the ground testers, taking measurements largely outdoors, are going to report.

The point is that "coverage" is a bit of a statistical exercise, and that network engineers and users mostly indoors will experience coverage differently.

UK 3G coverage slammed by crowd-sourcing study