News
Your Phone Signal is Worse than Vietnam's
— 3 mins read
Councils block masts, Ofcom holds prices down, and operators have handed billions to the Treasury for airwaves
Britain ranks 53rd out of 123 countries for mobile signal coverage, behind North Macedonia, Vietnam, and most of Europe, according to measurement firm Opensignal. For average download speeds, the UK sits 68th at 87.4 megabits per second, behind Morocco and Kazakhstan.
Connectivity firm Ookla spot-checked phones across the UK in the year to June and found 0.74% had no usable signal. In Derbyshire's High Peak, the figure rose to 5.4%. Even in Holborn and St Pancras in central London, 2.8% of phones had nothing.
In Whitby, North Yorkshire, demand on the network can grow by 300% in summer when tourists arrive. VodafoneThree customers there report a full 4G signal on screen but no working data.
Same mast, different postcode
Whitby's problem goes back years. In 2006, Vodafone applied to build a 9.4-metre monopole on Khyber Pass, overlooking the town. The council rejected it over fears it would spoil local views.
The pattern repeats across the country. Councils in Southampton and Sandwell approve more than 90% of telecom applications. The London boroughs of Richmond and Islington reject more than half.
Max Taylor, chief executive of VodafoneThree, said: 'This creates a level of doubt as to whether the same application would get through in one area or the other. And this creates costs and it creates delays.'
For average download speeds, the UK sits 68th at 87.4 megabits per second, behind Morocco and Kazakhstan.
Height is a problem too. The average UK mast stands 20 to 25 metres tall, against 48 metres in the US, 40 in Germany and 30 in Greece. The government relaxed rules on taller rural masts in 2021, but operators want limits raised further.
The £22.5 billion the Treasury took first
In 2000, chancellor Gordon Brown auctioned 3G spectrum rights for £22.5 billion. Operators took on heavy debts to pay it, and many in the industry trace decades of underinvestment back to that bill.
Virgin Media O2 has paid £300 million in spectrum fees over the past five years. 'That's £300 million that literally we could have just put right back into the network infrastructure', said Jeanie York, the company's chief technology officer.
Cheap bills, patchy bars
British consumers do get one thing in return: some of the cheapest mobile contracts in the developed world. Ofcom, the regulator, has made affordability a priority. Ofcom is funded mainly by fees from the industry it regulates.
BT's Greg McCall, citing government data, said inflation-adjusted revenue per mobile user fell from £19 to £10 between 2015 and 2025, while data usage grew roughly 40 times. Operators now openly argue prices must rise to fund the next round of building.
There has been progress. The Vodafone and Three merger completed on 31 May 2025, with an £11 billion infrastructure pledge over a decade. The combined firm spent more than £1 billion last year and says it has eliminated 16,500 sq km of signal blackspots. Virgin Media O2 has signed a deal with Starlink to reach rural customers by satellite.
The government's mobile market review is now weighing planning rules and spectrum costs. Ministers must decide who pays to fix the network: the Treasury, through lower fees, or households, through higher bills.
