Not spots of Internet coverage in the U.K.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Jonathan Blake wrote for BBC 30 August 2013, Campaigners challenge countryside mobile coverage plan,

Last month details were given about which so-called “not spots” would benefit from the £150m Mobile Infrastructure Plan.

The Countryside Alliance has said that it thinks the approach is “not good enough”.

Under the plan, Vodafone, EE, O2 and Three will operate equipment paid for by government funds.

“It’s brilliant that they’re doing it,” said Charlotte Cooper from the Countryside Alliance.

“[But] we’re a little bit concerned that they seem to have rolled back on what they said they were going to do.

“Originally it was going to be 92% of the 70,000 premises across the country with no signal. Now it’s only 75% at best. We don’t think that’s good enough.”

They’re specifically talking about wireless telephone coverage, but:

O2 highlighted its TuGo app as something it is doing to help “customers in areas that may not have coverage”.

The service lets users make and receive calls, send texts and access voicemail using a wi-fi connection.

And if you’ve got that wi-fi connection you can also do lots of other things on the Internet. And if the phone coverage is 4G LTE, ditto.

Of course a big difference is at least the U.K. government is trying to cover U.K. not spots, which is more than our local governments seem to be doing.

-jsq