Jeremy Harris Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 The problem is that there isn't enough profit to be made by installing even small cellular masts in rural areas. Large areas of Wiltshire have either no signal or a pretty poor signal, because the network is focussed on providing coverage in larger towns and along main roads. As many of the villages here are in deep valleys cut into the plain, and most of the major roads run along the plain, the coverage in many of the villages is pretty grim. The same goes for terrestrial TV (many villages here just lost terrestrial TV with the digital switch-over) and DAB radio. We can just about get VHF FM radio, but even with a roof mounted DAB aerial we can't get a signal at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 The government has legislation about it though, so profit is a secondary consideration, not paying the fine/bad press should be the big worry for the providers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 But isn't the legislation just to provide something like coverage to 95% of the population? Doesn't really help the 5% who happen to live in valleys that have no coverage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 Not sure, and like most legislation it has holes in it. But 5G is now being rolled out, 3G is getting the chop (maybe), so new infrastructure is being done. Then there are other providers or set up your own community service, all the hardware and software is there. Wish I had more time to get to understand it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 (edited) There is some interest in setting up a community service, but at the moment only from a dozen or so people, including some who'd like to work from home. It seems the majority just accept the pretty poor coverage as being the price they pay for living here. We've lived in our old house for 17 years, in a village with a population of around 500, and in that time have never had mobile coverage and have lost terrestrial TV coverage. We'll lose radio coverage too when they turn off FM in 2020. We do, by good fortune, have very good broadband, thanks to a certain military establishment just down the road that had a high bandwidth fibre put in, right along our road to the old telephone exchange less than 100m away. That's very unusual for this area, though, where most of the small rural exchanges aren't yet unbundled and aren't fibre connected. Edited February 20, 2017 by JSHarris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 The only place around me that has a decent signal and free wifi is the pub ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 19 minutes ago, joe90 said: The only place around me that has a decent signal and free wifi is the pub ? The pub in the village we're moving to closed a few years ago, and almost certainly doesn't get a mobile signal, and when the MBC lads who built our house were staying in a pub in a nearby village they were moaning that they couldn't get either a mobile signal or wifi! The problem here is that the majority of the population live in the big conurbations, like Salisbury and the surrounding fairly large towns, and they all have pretty good coverage. Once you get out into the countryside, where, at a guess, only around 5% or so of the local population live, coverage just disappears, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ferdinand Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 (edited) On community broadband, the earliest project I am aware of was Hayfield in the Peaks, who went live in 2003 with a Rabbit Grant. Remember Rabbit? It was driven by a volunteer group of techies and community people networking through pubs and local organisations, and institutionalised as a village development trust. THey have a website. That it is a little out of date says the service is reliable. http://www.digitalparish.com/ Trust website: http://www.developmenttrust.org/ Ferdinand Edited February 20, 2017 by Ferdinand Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 I wonder if height will help?, I have a 30ft telegraph pole spare and might put it up and see if a mobile at that height is any better, if it does then I could put a mobile up there in a water tight box, solar panel to charge it and use it as a hot spot!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeremy Harris Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 30 minutes ago, joe90 said: I wonder if height will help?, I have a 30ft telegraph pole spare and might put it up and see if a mobile at that height is any better, if it does then I could put a mobile up there in a water tight box, solar panel to charge it and use it as a hot spot!!! Yes, it does help. I have an antenna on a 6ft mast, poking over the ridge of the house. It's a directional antenna with a fair bit of gain over the sort of antenna in a mobile phone, and that just about allows me to get a pretty weak signal (1, maybe 2 bars) from the nearest base station, which is only about a mile away but over a hill. The type of repeater I have can work well in the right location; before I moved it to the new house I had it on a 12ft mast above the roof of our old house, and it gave us a pretty solid mobile signal at one end of the house. The snag is these repeaters are illegal, without a question of doubt, and there are a few tales of them being detected by the networks are your phone being shutdown, although I'm not at all convinced it's actually happened, or that the network can be sure that a repeater is being used. I've had a look at mine and it is pretty dumb, just a filter and pre-amplifier on the downlink band and a power amplifier and filter on the uplink band, with circulators to keep the signals separate at each end. As far as the network is concerned I'm pretty sure it will look just like a phone. I'd guess that the main issue is interference, or using one of these things too close to a base station and perhaps causing a problem from the relatively high effective radiated power from the directional antenna, but then most people would only get one if they were in a poor signal area. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steptoe Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 mobile phone repeaters Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nickfromwales Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 1 hour ago, Steptoe said: mobile phone repeaters What's the big hoo-ha about then? So what if someone boosts their utter dogshit signal so they can actually use their phone at home? I got fed up and rang EE to tell them I was leaving to go to vadaphone, due to not being able to maintain a conversation in my house. They told me they would do me a 'one-off favour' and supply me with a 3G booster that plugs into my wifi, plus I could also turn on wifi calling on my phone ( but not the wife's as she had, at the time, a 2nd hand phone which they wouldn't entertain ) and I was super lucky and privileged because they usually charge £100 for them. I said that the £100 was irrelevant as if they asked me for £100, so I could use my phones at home, they could stick their contracts up their arse. A day later a little gadget arrived, plugged it in and never looked back. 4-5 bars of 3G throughout the house 24/7 now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steptoe Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 51 minutes ago, Nickfromwales said: What's the big hoo-ha about then? So what if someone boosts their utter dogshit signal so they can actually use their phone at home? I got fed up and rang EE to tell them I was leaving to go to vadaphone, due to not being able to maintain a conversation in my house. They told me they would do me a 'one-off favour' and supply me with a 3G booster that plugs into my wifi, plus I could also turn on wifi calling on my phone ( but not the wife's as she had, at the time, a 2nd hand phone which they wouldn't entertain ) and I was super lucky and privileged because they usually charge £100 for them. I said that the £100 was irrelevant as if they asked me for £100, so I could use my phones at home, they could stick their contracts up their arse. A day later a little gadget arrived, plugged it in and never looked back. 4-5 bars of 3G throughout the house 24/7 now. its about having to be a licensed operator or some such rubbish, there are literally thousands of them in the country, but, if you do get caught they can be quite nasty to you, its probably because most of the ones on sale have harmonics all over the place and can interfere with 'proper' radio signals or some such stuff, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SteamyTea Posted February 20, 2017 Share Posted February 20, 2017 Things like this can happen: https://www.cnet.com/news/truck-driver-has-gps-jammer-accidentally-jams-newark-airport/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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