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Readers' letters 95%? You're having a laugh

Punters unimpressed by mobile connection claim

UK mobile networks connect 95% of the time

95% - you call that a service? Well, the networks do. But not Andy D:

95% is shit. Imagine you picked up your phone at home and one time in 20 you didn't get a line? Or 1 time in 20 it just didn't connect you when you dialled. Hardly what you'd call sterling service, is it?

Good point. It's a bit like stating that something is 84% fat-free thus suggesting that a mere 16% fat is a good thing. Whatever. Some people, John included, are having none of the figures at all:

So apparently in the south east there is a 95% connection success rate. I think what happened there was a typo. It should read "UK mobile networks connect 9.5% of the time". I think that is a more realistic figure.

Then again, Francois reckons the real figures are readily available:

I just read your story today and I have to wonder why the operators had to conduct test drives when all the statistics (and more) are available directly from the networks' operation centres in the form of very detailed measurements including such things as succesful call attempts unsuccesful ones (with cause for failure) handover success rates and such?

Surely those numbers would have been more reliable than driving through selected areas making calls in a car, especially since most of the measurements can be broken down by cell (how else would they know when specific parts of the network go down, so they can fix them).

And remember, even if you a connection every time, there's probably some poor bloke herding sheep on the side of a windswept mountain trying in vain to get through to the Leek Marketing Board. Most likely Huw Pritchard:

This thing about 86.4% of mobile calls in Wales being connected, I think for some reason I'm actually making up the entire 13.6% that aren't!

Sodding Orange...

Tim Auton had a good theory on improving connection statistics:

I can see why the results are grossly inaccurate when compared to anyone who's ever used a mobile phone's experience, to quote from the research "data was compiled from vehicles - using roof mounted aerials".

Well that's a fucking lot of good considering the majority of calls are made from hand portables within buildings. Perhaps more of my calls would connect if I had my phone connected to a two foot vertical aerial in the street.

Here's an idea, we could have stations (boxes?) in the street where for a small fee (say, 20p?) we could plug into a nice big aerial and then we too could have 95% of our calls connect.

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