Ofcom shames Vodafone as rural Britain’s worst mobile operator
Vodafone has been named and shamed by telecoms regulator Ofcom as Britain’s worst mobile operator for dropped calls, in its latest survey of 2G and 3G signal strength throughout the UK.
The damning report found that 20 per cent of all calls made by Vodafone customers outwith the big cities either lost connection midway through or failed to connect at all, even when within a signalled area.
Nationally the operator did a little better with an average of 7.4 per cent of calls failing but this was far higher than the best provider, EE, which was found to drop just 3 per cent of calls. The number also compared badly to rival networks O2 and Three which struggled with 4.7 and 5.5 per cent of all calls respectively.
When Britain’s remotest communities were looked at however, defined as villages with a population of less than 2,000, Ofcom found the picture was even worse with 35 per cent of respondents reportedly unable to make a call at least once a week and 28 per cent suffering a dropped call over the same period.
Across Britain 5 per cent of mobile users had to put up with calls dropping every day.
Ofcom said its figures were designed to ‘support initiatives to improve mobile coverage and provide consumers with quality information on mobile reception.’