Further Resources: Mobile signal survey: Comparison with Official Signal status
6: Comparison with Official Signal status
According to Ofcom’s official analysis, almost the whole of the parish of North Huish should have a ‘good chance’ of receiving a mobile telephone signal outdoors, which differs from our results. Avonwick is, officially, almost entirely without a signal strong enough to be used indoors, and this is both confirmed and amplified by our findings.
6.1: Indoors
Figure 6 shows the official coverage map of combined indoor voice signal availability without 4G-enabled phone (all networks), according to Ofcom[1]:
Figure 6: Official indoor signal coverage with maps for all networks overlaid
Although this map shows a large official ‘not spot’ across the village, the majority of our respondents live in areas marked as having a ‘possible chance’ of indoor reception on at least one network on Ofcom’s official estimates. Our responses show that in reality the chance is distinctly low, with 58% having no useable signal indoors.
6.2: Outdoors
Official coverage maps indicate that the whole of Avonwick should be able to receive a good chance of a mobile signal outdoors[2].
Figure 7: Official outdoor coverage with maps for all networks overlaid
Our responses show that 68% of the village find this not to be the case and report no useable signal outside their house. Their approximate locations are shown below.
Figure 8: Areas which reported no useable signal outdoors using same grid
This survey suggests that the strength of signal outdoors in Avonwick is being badly overestimated by the official coverage analysis, and that signal strength in Avonwick is much worse than the networks believe. This ties in with a comment from one respondent that their network provider blamed ‘older mobile phones’ rather than acknowledging a weak signal.
[1] https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/mobile-coverage
[2] https://checker.ofcom.org.uk/mobile-coverage
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