National roaming for mobile phones to be introduced into the UK??

[TobyCoulson]

I do hope so

I'm sure there's some argument against it but the number of times I've gone away and not had any mobile service in this country is beyond a joke.

[Ian B]

The main argument against it is unless they are heavily subsidised there will be no incentive for the mobile companies to install more masts, if it just means that their competitors customers can use them.

 

 

[keybaud]

Quoting Ian B: 

The main argument against it is unless they are heavily subsidised there will be no incentive for the mobile companies to install more masts, if it just means that their competitors customers can use them.

 

 

They seem to have missed the point that there is already technology to allow multiplee operators from a single antenna, so if there is no service for one provider, it is unlikely that there'll be service for anyone else either. There may be the odd exception, but I doubt this will suddenly provide service to Lulworth cove, etc.

 

This country is actually far better off than many other countries, as we are very compact, whereas places like the USA have huge areas with no coverage.

 

Edited by - keybaud on 21 Jun 2014 12:00:23

[Ian B]

Quoting keybaud: 

They seem to have missed the point that there is already technology to allow multiplee operators from a single antenna, so if there is no service for one provider, it is unlikely that there'll be service for anyone else either. There may be the odd exception, but I doubt this will suddenly provide service to Lulworth cove, etc.

That's exactly the point; if there is a need for service coverage somewhere, there will be no incentive for any operator to install a mast at their own cost.

Technically it's not a problem, but there's a negative incentive from a business perspective.

 

[Steve-B]

So if it is a negative incentive to provide the roaming service, how the heck does 999 from any phone work out to be viable? Or is that part of some fat/profitable government subsidy they don't want to reveal how much ££'s they're making?

 

If this does get setup, then the likely winners would be overseas visitors, who could float from provider to provider. The UK operators don't want such an agreement so they can continue to screw us financially.

[Jonathan Kay]

How do the incentives towards better coverage work in the current franchises?

 

Thanks

 

Jonathan

[Roger Ford]

How do the incentives towards better coverage work in the current franchises?

People get fed up with crap coverage from their current provider and move to a different one.

So if it is a negative incentive to provide the roaming service, how the heck does 999 from any phone work out to be viable?

Eh? What do you mean "viable" - why should there be any subsidy involved? I assume a condition of a mobile licence is that you accept 999 calls from any phone without it having to be on your network.

 

[Jonathan Kay]

Quoting Jonathan Kay: 

How do the incentives towards better coverage work in the current franchises?

The coverage obligations for 3G are regulated by Ofcom:

Ofcom has today published the outcome of an assessment of whether the UK’s major mobile phone networks are meeting their 3G coverage obligations.

When 3G mobile spectrum licences were awarded in 2000, they included an obligation to roll-out services to 80% of the UK by population. However, in 2010 the Government directed Ofcom to increase this obligation further, requiring operators to cover 90% of where the UK population lives.

EE, Three, O2 and Vodafone agreed to reach this new coverage obligation by a deadline of 30 June 2013.

Once this deadline had passed, Ofcom conducted an assessment of each operator’s compliance with the new coverage obligation. The outcome of this reveals that the mobile phone operators – EE, Three and O2 – have successfully met this obligation.

However, one operator, Vodafone, failed to meet the obligation, falling 1.4% short of the 90% coverage requirement.

4G:

Ofcom has designed the 4G auction in a way that will see mobile broadband rolled out to at least 98% of people in villages, towns and cities across the UK. This is for indoor coverage; however, given that it is easier to provide coverage outdoors, a network meeting this obligation is likely to cover more than 99% of the UK by population when outdoors.

Beyond that it looks as if it might just be market forces.

 

Jonathan

 

Edited by - Jonathan Kay on 21 Jun 2014 18:09:08

[RichardO]

I assume a condition of a mobile licence is that you accept 999 calls from any phone without it having to be on your network.

 

Correct. Although there is also a requirement to block calls from handsets without a SIM due to the number of untraceable hoax calls when the service was first introduced.

 

Roaming for emergency calls is technically a lot simpler than national roaming for standard services. And the complexity gets much worse if you want call / session continuity as you move between networks.

 

R

 

Edited by - RichardO on 23 Jun 2014 08:16:20

[RichardO]

It may be that everyone has their own mast soon though: here

 

 

[TobyCoulson]

Forgetting all the arguments about incentives and as it would appear that the mobile towers can multi task I expect my mobile phone to be as easy to use as a landline regardless of who I pay the bills to. That's the issue that the majority of users in this country have.

[Steve-B]

We've been able to do that on o2 for several years, including the Tube where Virgin operate WiFi points in stations. That's dead easy to do, but a valid point Richard.

 

Quoting RichardO: 

It may be that everyone has their own mast soon though: here

 

[DougBaker]

Given that the free roaming will be Europe wide unless the UKIPers spoil the plans we should be able to get a cheap french contract and roam all the UK carriers if the UK based services cannot work out how to do UK based roaming.

[Steve-B]

exactly Doug, you hit it in one!

 

That's where the UK duopoly will take it badly, so if OFCOM has any brains/balls/teeth/spine they'll fix this properly to avoid your scenario coming as our best option...

[Jonathan Kay]

Quoting DougBaker: 

Given that the free roaming will be Europe wide unless the UKIPers spoil the plans we should be able to get a cheap french contract and roam all the UK carriers if the UK based services cannot work out how to do UK based roaming.

I was wondering how that would affect this.

 

1 The next set of caps are about to start.

 

2 I don't think the EU regulations define how networks must be made available: only a cap on charges of they are available. But I do seem to be offered lots of networks.

 

3 I don't think the regulations affect what happens within the host nation, and the UK would probably be stridently against them doing so, which takes you back to getting a foreign contract.

 

Worth trying?

 

Jonathan

 

Edited by - Jonathan Kay on 24 Jun 2014 08:48:04

[Jonathan Kay]

The Prime Minister joins in, and a bit on subsidies and incentives: article in The Register.

 

Jonathan

[Jonathan Kay]

New Ofcom report: "Consumer experiences of mobile phone calls".

 

The Register isn't impressed.

 

Jonathan

 

[Jonathan Kay]

End of roaming charges in the EU. 

BBC coverage of the limits for the next 2 y:

From April 2016, telecoms operators will be able to add a surcharge of no more than:
€0.05 (3.5p) extra per minute for calls
€0.02 extra per SMS sent
€0.05 extra per megabyte of data used.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Kay]

Still don't know why you can't roam at home, but Full Fact nearly explains.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Kay]

"The National Infrastructure Commission publishes its report into 5G and telecommunication technology", includes:

"Our 4G network is worse than Romania and Albania, Panama and Peru.".

Jonathan

[David Brown]

Jonathan, I haven't been to any of these countries but find that statistic difficult to believe. Not that our coverage is acceptable.

[Jonathan Kay]

The full report has just appeared: "Connected Future". That has the international comparison on page 8, and cites the source as reference 59. It's actually 60: "OpenSignal’s state of LTE, November 2016 report". 

Jonathan

[AntonyH]

Jonathan, I haven't been to any of these countries but find that statistic difficult to believe.

Worth noting the metric is not what one might first assume:

Rather than measure geographic coverage, OpenSignal's availability metric tracks the proportion of time users have access to a particular network. For example if a country has 50% 4G availability, then on average that country's 4G users can find an LTE signal half of the time.

So taking a hugely stereotypical view that a Peruvian high in the Andes might not be a 4G user because there may be zero 4G signal up there, then that person is excluded from the stats as they aren't a 4G user.

Inventing a ridiculous example, if a massive country (say, of the size and population of the USA) had a single 4G user who lived next to that country's only 4G tower, that country's 4G availability stat would likely be near 100% by this method of measurement.