Hi. Ofcom? My mobe's call quality is crap – but you said it was fine

Consumers will soon get proper information on how well their phone makes calls. Regulator Ofcom is to use an independent lab to test and rate phones for how well they actually make calls, and will release the information to the public.

Too good to be true? Not according to the Telegraph. Ofcom reportedly told the paper that the info will be available “within weeks”.

Like other regulators, Ofcom has modelled network coverage, and castigated operators for poor coverage. But often, dropped calls and poor reception are the consequence of bad antenna design and poor signalling stacks in what the industry quaintly still calls "the terminal". Modern smartphones are also more complicated, requiring around seven or eight antennas*.

In the pre-Apple era, radio signalling stacks were proprietary to the major players and were mature, having been thoroughly debugged over the years. Poor radio performance was a competitive disadvantage. But in the modern era, manufacturers pay relatively less attention to voice, knowing the phone will sell on non-core features such as a camera, or simply having a fruit emblem on the back.

In addition, most smartphones in the world now run off-the-shelf signalling software. Cynical manufacturers also know that angry kneejerk punters are more likely to blame their mobile network provider than the handset’s designers.

The definition of “core feature” has also changed. Deloitte found out this week that one in four smartphone owners hadn’t made a voice call in the past week.

In the US, the FCC publishes detailed radio performance of any equipment that wants to use US spectrum, but this isn’t a consumer-friendly application test. Our mobile networks certainly know which handsets perform well in great detail – but they’re reluctant to share the results of their testing in fear of retaliation from the handset providers.

Consumers can now hope that Ofcom follows through, making the data available widely and easily understandable. This hasn’t always been the case with Ofcom: the regulator's 3G database and modelling was only turned into a population coverage map after it had refused to do so several times. And when it did, it was so low resolution it was useless. ®

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* One or two for Wi-Fi, and one or two for 3G, LTE, NFC, Bluetooth and 2G.