From 999 fears to failed payments - life in UK's phone signal 'blackspots'

Trudi King-Gunn works in a village with virtually no mobile phone signal.

She and the village's residents rely mostly on Wi-Fi and landlines to stay connected, but in a power cut that becomes problematic.

"The concern is when we need to call the emergency services," said Trudi.

Most areas of the UK now have access to 4G and 5G signal, but in some places the lack of it can cause serious disruption to people's lives.

Analysis by the consumer organisation Which? suggests the UK has the poorest mobile network quality in the G7 nations, while more than a third of mobile customers surveyed reported problems with poor signal.

BBC News has spoken to people in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England to find out how the problem is affecting communities.

Eskdalemuir, where Trudi works, is a remote village in southern Scotland with about 250 residents.

"In the actual centre of Eskdalemuir, it is a blackspot," said Trudi, who works at the Eskdalemuir Community Hub.

There are concerns that with digital-only systems replacing analogue landlines, the villagers could be cut off in an emergency.

Power cuts are not uncommon in the area and not everyone has back-up batteries to keep their landlines operating.

"We have got a defibrillator and there have been a couple of issues when people have needed it and tried to ring the ambulance service," she said.

"Sometimes you can jump on [the hub's] Wi-Fi - if you are close enough."

She said back-up batteries were available but they would only keep landlines working for two or three hours.

The situation is even more frustrating, according to Trudi, because she knows there is good signal nearby.

"I live four miles down the road and I have perfect mobile signal but in [Eskdalemuir] there is just nothing," she added.

"There is no talk of any sort of change or mast going up or anything like that."

Villagers keep their fingers crossed that power cuts do not last long or that their back-up systems are sufficient.

BT said it offered a range of options in the event of a power cut, and that back-up power generators were being added to more sites.

In north Wales, the coastal town of Llandudno attracts millions of visitors every year.

But poor phone signal leaves traders struggling to process payments and visitors struggling to make calls.

"It affects us massively, especially with the number of businesses we have," said Paul Williams, general manager of Llandudno Pier.

"They all rely on the 5G signal to try and get the card transactions processed."

The problem was clear just moments after meeting kiosk owner Bella McBride, as one of her customers faced a long wait to pay by card.

"My card machine, for example, some days it can go down completely and not everybody carries cash," said Bella.

"It ranges from atrocious to completely useless," said Alan Heseldine, who runs a seafood kiosk on the pier.

"It's a major problem because I can't use the card machines to best effect. I can't make phone calls to suppliers, I have to wait until I go home or I can get Wi-Fi somewhere else.

"It's really difficult. It makes the job a lot harder than it needs to be."

Last year local councillors gave permission for new phone masts to be put up in the town, but the work is yet to be carried out.

The visual impact of any new masts has been raised as a concern, as Llandudno's Victorian seafront is a conservation area.

Tilly Adams-Mears, who was visiting Llandudno for the day to surprise her grandmother, said she was caught out by the lack of signal.

"I've been trying to contact my nan and you can't get hold of her at all. Honestly - there's no phone bars."

Meanwhile, 230 miles (370km) away on the opposite side of the UK, traders in the city of Ely, Cambridgeshire, face similar issues.

Tasnime Rotherham, 42, who runs a mobile catering business, said the notoriously bad signal in the city centre was affecting trade.

"Fifty percent of our payments are on card, so we need a decent signal," she said.

"I've lost a few sales because people have walked off and not realised their payment didn't go through.

"We now have trader Wi-Fi because the signal in the marketplace is like a black zone."

Ely does not have any phone masts in the city centre. Instead, they are dotted around the outskirts.

Telecommunications consultant Bob Driver said the size of Ely Cathedral also reduced connectivity.

"Because it's a historic town you don't want to see lots of base stations everywhere and people object to them, so planning permission is a problem," he added.

Tasnime has much better reception in her home village a couple of miles outside of Ely, which she described as "the middle of nowhere".

"I don't understand why we are OK [there]," she said.

Ely is looking at installing small booster cells on lamp-posts, which would cost less than a mast and not interfere with the city's landscape.

Mobile network operators cover the cost of these cells but they only boost the signal for about 150m (492ft). Mobile UK, which represents providers, said the cells were designed to complement masts, not replace them.

The roll-out of mobile services and infrastructure in the UK is led by private mobile network operators (MNOs).

According to the latest Ofcom data, 84% of the UK has good 4G coverage from all MNOs, while 96% of the UK has 4G coverage from at least one MNO.

Mobile UK said MNOs were investing billions across every UK nation to improve connectivity.

"We fully recognise the daily frustration poor signal causes for residents, high street traders, and rural communities trying to take card payments or stay connected."

But they said if governments wanted "world-class, reliable mobile connectivity" then planning systems needed to be "modernised", adding that "cutting this red tape is vital if operators are to deploy new sites".

The delivery of mobile infrastructure projects often overlaps with devolved powers, such as planning. But telecommunications is not devolved, meaning the UK government has primary responsibility for setting targets and policy.

The UK government said: "Fast, reliable digital infrastructure is fundamental to a growing economy. That's why we are working closely with industry to deliver our ambition of achieving 5G coverage across all populated areas of the UK by 2030.

"Through the Shared Rural Network, more than 95% of the UK's landmass is now within range of a 4G signal, one year ahead of the schedule, with the programme providing rural coverage to an area equivalent to almost 800,000 football pitches.

"Demand on mobile networks continues to grow, so we are looking at what more can be done to support investment and improve network performance over the long term through the Mobile Market Review."

In County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, where locals have previously described "complete blackspots" of phone signal, there are signs of improvement.

The expansion of mobile network infrastructure has faced the challenge of strict planning laws and, in recent years, frequent arson attacks linked to online conspiracy theories.

The Northern Ireland Executive launched a Mobile Action Plan in 2020 with the aim of working with MNOs to identify issues and "support rollout and expansion".

Catháir Brady, who works at a theatre in the town of Coalisland, said the 5G coverage had subsequently improved and was now "reliable enough", whereas before it could "get worse by moving even a few feet".

However, he said 5G coverage in the neighbouring town of Clonoe, where he lives, remained "awful".

A few miles away in Stewartstown, Joanne Sinclair said recent improvements to 4G and 5G coverage had been hugely beneficial to her family's hardware store.

"Many different networks work," said Joanne, while previously only a very small number of networks received 5G coverage in the area, and these were often patchy.

She said the improvements had come in the last five years and the improved 4G and 5G coverage was useful for processing payments and making calls.

"I make a lot of business phone calls off my mobile," she said, adding that before the improvements, staff would have to stand in a specific part of the office just to make a call.

Additional reporting by Rosie Mercer and Ema Sabljak