NEWS 03.02.99: UK telecoms regulator, Oftel has set the cat among the mobile pigeons by independently auditing all four major networks' performance across the country.
Oftel hired Surrey-based telecoms consultancy, Freshfields Communications to conduct the survey in London, Edinburgh and Cardiff - and on train routes between the cities.
Results varied dramatically on rail routes from 73 per cent of calls completed successfully for Vodafone, up to 89 per cent of calls for Orange. Rates in London came out best, with all four networks scoring between 97 and 99 per cent.
Robin Bosworth, director at telecoms consultancy Schema, said: "This is something that is needed, but it really should be compiled from the information each of the networks has rather than from Oftel's own survey." He added that using the networks' own figures with some measure of customer satisfaction would give consumers a clearer picture.
A spokeswoman for Orange said: "We are delighted with the results but would like them to have covered indoor coverage as well."
A spokesman for One2One was less impressed claiming: "The data is fundamentally flawed - the sample is too small, the time covered far too short and the measuring technique wrong."
He further claimed that the test calls were made to One2One customer services - so operators faced with a silent phone line would have terminated them before ninety seconds was up - so appearing, wrongly, as "failed calls" in the Oftel report.
A spokesman for Vodafone claimed the company "is very supportive of quality of service statistics" but questioned the reliability of such a limited survey.
Oftel stressed it was a 'snapshot' survey covering limited areas on just one day. Fifteen hundred calls were made on each network.
03.02.04: Despite the advances in mobile communications and services it seems customers are still blighted by network 'blindspots' even in major cities, and outages at times of peak demand. Many New Year revellers were unable to send text messages because of the volume of people deluging operators' networks with requests.
And there are still occasional local network outages caused by upgrades or system failures that impact significant numbers of mobile users.
Of course, part of the problem has been planning objections in some areas to new mobile masts going up. In fact health and safety concerns have led to protestors and operators mast debating for years, and the imminent mainstream introduction of 3G services to the UK is only likely to add to the row.
