'We would be better off with a carrier pigeon than a mobile phone'

Residents struggling to make mobile phone calls because of poor service are being told work is under way to improve connectivity.

It is more than 40 years since the first mobiles came on the market in the UK, but for some unable to get a signal it can still feel like being in the dark ages.

One example is in the Oxfordshire village of Kingswood, where Jeremy Hitchcox is among residents who said the signal was "non-existent" and joked "we would be better off with a carrier pigeon".

Oxfordshire County Council said it had set up a specialised digital team to tackle the issue because "rural communities shouldn't have to settle for poor mobile service".

The council is running project "digital twin" to enhance the county's connectivity.

It uses crowd-sourced data to focus on areas where mobile coverage is "particularly bad", including central Oxford, Abingdon, Frilford Heath, and the villages of Toot Baldon, Marsh Baldon, and Little Baldon.

To help users check signals, Ofcom's new Map Your Mobile tool also uses crowd-sourced data to reflect coverage and performance.

A spokesperson for the regulator said: "Mobile dead spots may exist for all manner of reasons, with various factors affecting coverage."

Karen Ferguson, who lives in a dead spot in Long Hanborough, said: "Quite a few villages across Oxfordshire like Witney, Baldon and Woodstock all have little to no signal."

Another frustrated resident, Charlie Jones from Leafield, said the signal was "dreadful" until he changed providers.

He added: "With my previous provider I would get no signal at home or in the nearest village, but friends and family in similar areas on other providers had no issue."

The UK's mobile networks are dominated by three major operators - EE, O2 and VodafoneThree.

The providers said they were doing what they could to improve the situation in Oxfordshire and Berkshire.

Ian Milligan, from VodafoneThree, acknowledged that coverage was "sparse depending on where you are".

Poor reception is often associated with rural areas, but people can also experience problems in towns and cities due to old buildings and thick walls.

Milligan explained that "proximity to large trees or buildings when outdoors, interference from large home electronics, or thickness of walls if using a device indoors" could all make a difference.

Craig Bower, digital infrastructure programme director at Oxfordshire County Council, said the digital twin initiative had helped "capture the problem areas".

He said that "now we have established these areas we are looking at solving the issues - but each village is unique".

Milligan said: "100% coverage in itself will be extremely challenging because you do get these extreme rural areas."

He added that VodafoneThree had upgraded 8,000 sites and "limited 16,500 dead spots".

An O2 spokesperson said it had recently upgraded its signal in Oxford, Abingdon, Kidlington, Reading, Slough and Twyford, and it was investing more than £700m a year into mobile networks, including "in Berkshire and Oxfordshire which focus on expanding our 4G and 5G coverage".

Operator EE said: "We have significantly expanded the reach of EE's 5G network, which increases our geographic coverage by almost 25% in Oxfordshire and 20% in Berkshire."

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