Broadband and mobile coverage in "hard-to-reach" places

Pet50

I live in a village on the Isle of Wight. Both internet connection and phone signals are almost non-existant! The internet is slow and over the last few weeks has disappeared some days/nights.
To get a single bar of phone signal I have to go to the far corner of the dining room and sway it high in the air!!
We should be further than this, shouldn't we??

840inSussex

I live in RH10 3HY on the Sussex/Surrey border. It is only 5 miles from gatwick Airport, so hardly rural. Whilst my mobile seems to work anywhere in the world, it does not include my home. My present carrier O2 shows on their coverage map that I get good coverage inside and out on 2G and 3G. It is NOT TRUE. None of the people in my road get a decent signal on any of the networks. Even 2G Voice is useless both inside and out on O2. EE signal does not even appear in any form, I bought an EE SIM and it was totally useless. Vodaphone say 2G,3G and 4G has full coverage. Complete fantasy, what a joke, not even a hope of reliable 2G Voice. "3" is just the same. This has gone on for years, and there seems to be no plans to change it. Any plans to force operators to share networks are doomed to failure here, as NONE OF THEM WORK!

loops298

How come I can get a full mobile signal in the middle of the Sahara Desert (with not a mast in sight) but I cannot get a mobile signal in 3rd world Wiltshire? Although I look at the mobile provider coverage maps which suggest that everything is rosy, I still have to go upstairs and stand at the front of the house to have a conversation. That's with O2, but the rest are no better. Go anywhere near Salisbury Plain and forget it, nothing!

My BB isn't great, I should be getting up to 10Mb but get just under 2Mb

Propel

I live on the main trunk road between Nottingham and Mansfield so not actually that rural but still out of town. On a good day I get 0.8 Meg download. That's just enough for 1 person to watch a 240p YouTube video with some buffering. If someone else should upate their weather on their mobile phone for example, that will stop the video in its tracks! With 3 teenage lads in the house you can see how frustrating this becomes. I use EE mobile which is OK in the kitchen and garden but elsewhere in the house it is between poor and none existent.
I have spoken to our M.P. before the election and he says the conservatives are pushing for better broadband for all. I only think this is going to be a long wait.....

Propel

As the title suggests. I'm also paying full price for a near useless service!

sapphire6

Live on outskirts of Gloucester(Highnam) and lucky if we can get a 2G phone signal at the bottom of the garden. As soon as we give a Phone Store our post code they say 'little chance of a signal'. What can be so hard in this day and age to get a proper mobile signal. We have only within the last year been able to get superfast broadband,, but only for those who choose to pay the extra cost, while those in the city receive speeds with standard broadband of 22meg and more. The area also hit national news two years ago, when the whole of the village was cut of with no phones or broadband due to flood damage.

Thrifteen

I have little 3G coverage with EE and Three within my home in London SE12, very often no signal at all. Very frustrating to pay for a phone service where I am unable to make calls.

Jeannine

I'm in NR14, about 8 miles from Norwich. Mobile signal with EE is very poor, often non-existent. (I was in Switzerland a while ago, in the middle of nowhere, up a mountain - brilliant signal.)

Also, fed up with hearing about superfast fibre broadband. Not here!!

Cause2ureffect_2

I live in a newly built area in stockton on tees. I moved here from fibre and was told that I would be able to get fibre at my new property with Virgin as they supply fibre in the area and BT don't. When I moved in I found that Virgin had removed all their lines from the building area and wouldn't be supplying any form of broadband until after the build was completely finished (this is 5 years). BT and companies that use BT's line are our only alternative providers. We were with BT for a year, orginally promised 4mb/s but that quickly drop to 2, then 1 and finally before we switch they told us that they will not do anything to fix any broadband problems until the speeds dropped below 0.52mb/s! This is rediculous as those speeds you can't even open a web page without the requests timing out so to say that it is usable internet and change us £30+ a month for boradband and line rental is outrageous.
BT told us that they couldn't do anything about the speeds because we are over 2km from the exchange and they weren't planning any upgrades to our lines or services for the foreseeable future.
After switch to sky they have told us we are more than 7km from the exchange and our speeds have dropped below one even though we have written confirmation that we should receive a minimum of 1.3mb/s and although I have phone to try and find the problem they have pushed the problem to me saying that in the line it is 1.3mb/s and if it drop from the line to the house it is our problem and there is nothing they can do about it (I'm pretty sure that's selling a product under false pretences but that's a whole know bag of worms)

I think goverment should be more involved in fibre and broadband in general, we had our MP sending out petitions to locals trying to convince BT to lay fibre in our area over a year ago to no avail, if the goverment or council had some say over it we wouldn't be stuck paying for unusable internet and terrible attitude towards the customers.

I don't care how they do it but they need to set a standard in broadband because it is an everyday necessity now, there isn't a job out their that doesn't require some amount of internet usage and I don't think that business and consumers should be limited by the say of a big company as to who should and should have access to that necessity.

I also would just like to say that virgin media keep sending me letters and leaflets saying fibre is coming to my area or telling me all the great benefits of fibre. If fibre way available I would be the first to know, please stop making me so sad virgin media!

subseaeng

Hi. We live only 30 miles due south of central london. We receive a max of 1.5Mbps download and usually less. Our exchange is not due to be fibre enabled until possibly March next year. As our cabinet is about 2 miles from the exchange we are unlikely ever to get a decent broadband service. There is no wireless alternative. Mobile phone coverage is also pretty poor. No 4G here, barely 3G. How can we run a business here? We cannot take advantage of all these amazing offers currently offered. To download a movie or aTV programme takes hours. I am really fed up with all the bull spouted to us by Government. No intent or commitment from them. Where is our champion?