In New Zealand much scorn was poured upon the mobile duopoly of Telecom NZ and Vodafone.  God knows I dislike the later as much, if not more so than the next man, but that is a post for another day.

But for a country of less than 5 million and yet a similar size to the UK (i.e. pretty sparsely populated) generally mobile comms was pretty decent.  I mean, take the little (130,000 people) town we resided in, Tauranga.  At home I was a good 7 miles from the cell tower BUT maintained either a 3G or 3.5G (HSDPA) signal 24×7.

Right now I’m living in the South East of England, Kent to be precise.  We’re about 25 miles from the centre of London, 5 from the M25 – hardly the back of beyond.  I can see a cell tower from the upstairs bedroom window (about 8 miles away) and know full well that there are a few more I can’t see that are closer.

Can I get a reliable signal here.  Nope.  Upstairs with line of sight maybe, just maybe half a full set of bars.  Downstairs – where I want to work – nothing.  Not even a GSM signal capable of sending an SMS let alone holding a voice call or data.

And it’s not as if I hadn’t done some research before choosing a network – I asked loads of people, rang a few customer service desks (although how a guy in Mubai is seriously going to understand localised signal problems in the Garden of England I don’t get).

After looking ThreeUK seemed the best bet with coverage for 99.5% of the UK.   Actually looking at Three’s coverage map we should have full blown 3.5G!

So new (back) to the UK, job hunting and such I have to hand out my contact details daily.  But missing those calls has been a regular occurrence as of course not only does the call not come through but neither does the SMS letting me know or the voicemail message from Three.

Scuppered.

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