Manchester is one of the blackspots in the UK for mobile phone network coverage, an online survey has revealed.
Last month The Guardian Datablog encouraged readers to contact them and share their network coverage bug bears and any reported blackspots were placed on an interactive online map.
The map showed Manchester customers of O2, EE and Three amongst others to be experiencing problems and Three customer Ciaran Mcloughlin from Ashton-under-Lyne testified to this.
“I live in Park Bridge and the reception is terrible, there is connectivity in the middle of our street but there is no coverage whatsoever inside the house,” said Mr Mcloughlin.
“We have a house phone but that can sometimes be difficult to hear due to poor reception, I haven’t been here [at Park Bridge, Ashton-Under-Lyne] that long but I imagine it’s only going to get worse come the winter.
“Any problems are going to have a detrimental effect when it comes to people renewing their contracts.”
An unnamed Orange customer from Manchester who contacted The Guardian Datablog said that her network coverage has become ‘very poor’ since the launch of its sister network EE and stated that five of her neighbours have encountered the same difficulties.
Unfortunately EE chose not to comment on the story but O2 did assure its Manchester users that they are working tirelessly to rectify the problems.
An O2 spokesperson said: “Area by area, we’re completely modernising our network and we’re investing £1.5million everyday on replacing and upgrading equipment to ensure our 2G, 3G and 4G networks are delivering the best experience for our customers.
“This includes Manchester where our 4G service was activated on October 31 giving nearly one million people in the region the opportunity to experience superfast data speeds on their mobile and tablet devices.
“As ever, our first priority when undertaking any network maintenance is to keep the customer impact to an absolute minimum.”
Any O2 customers who are still experiencing network coverage difficulties should visit http://www.o2.co.uk/network or tweet @O2.
Picture courtesy of John Taylor via Flickr, with thanks.
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