The emperor has no clothes: Mobile — it’s pretty shit when mobile
Anyone walking down today’s high street would be forgiven for assuming that the United Kingdom had a substantially advanced mobile industry. Peer into any Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U and you’ll see them festooned with mobile related gizmos and gadgets. Central to the whole concept is the understand that you can use a mobile handset to talk with another person, without any wires.
So central is the general belief, that we all automatically assume that it’s possible to talk on the mobile phone, whilst mobile. We don’t even think about it.
No one walks into Carphone Warehouse, picks up a handset, and asks at the counter, ‘Does this, er, does this handset work, you know, mobile? Can you walk around with it and still speak to people?’
Traveling from Manchester to Darlington this evening, I can definitely confirm that the emperor has no clothes. Mobile is totally shit.
This train is doing about 45 miles per hour and both T-Mobile and Three (or, Orange) have been drop calls approximately every 5 minutes, sometimes every 2 minutes. I can literally see the cell areas coming and going.
Just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
I think it’s me that’s at fault though. I seemed to think that I could actually hold conversations whilst on the train — even a slow train.
I was actually sat in York station, NOT MOVING for 10 minutes and my call disconnected. No signal. It just disappeared. Geez.
So, yes, it’s me whose clearly at fault. Mismatched expectations.
Thank god is all I can say.
Firstly, as a former RF engineer, I can testify to the time and money that goes into mobile coverage, and getting it right. It’s one thing to cover a suburb, it’s a completely different thing to cover a train, in a rural area, carrying hundreds of 2G and 3G mobiles and moving at 80MPH.
The additional number of sites required to deliver urban QoS to a 3G mobile on a train is scary. Generally, the sort of area trains go through would require either lots and lots of low sites, or merely lots of tall sites. Either one is a pain to get permission for, and build. Do you want loads more cellsites all over your lovely piece of local countryside just so City types and Chavs can bawl into their mobiles uninterrupted?
Which brings me to my second point….
The poor QoS on trains is a godsend, because most people don’t bother making or redialling calls. This of course doesn’t stop some people trying.
Data is ‘Ok’, because the QoS can fall pretty low and still deliver an OK browsing/email experience. Sure, you won’t be able to stream YouTube, but so what? Do you NEED that huge file or video stream right now? emails will wait patiently for a few minutes until you are in coverage again, then away they go and in come the new ones. Fine. Handover / Data session reconnectivity is up to the operator to get right, and customers can choose based on that if they wish.
Most MNO’s cover 90%-ish of where people live, work and play, and it costs Bn’s to do that. Covering the other 10% would cost the same amount of Bn’s. Money well-spent? Or should you just accept that there will be gaps in service?
You accept having to drive around corners in a car. Sure, if the Romans ran your local council then you could straight-line it to work, but the country would be paved flat.
Enjoy the gaps in coverage. Enjoy not being connected from time to time. I carry 4 phones, a laptop, and have about a zillion PC & Mobile clients begging for presence/attention/updating. Sometimes, no coverage is the best thing in the world.
Posted by Mike on March 19th, 2007 at 12:53 pm.