Rural Community Gateway

5-Nov-2008 @ 16:51PM

Norette Ferns

I was in Barra recently and met some young people who had successfully lobbied Orange to improve the mobile phone reception in their area.

You'll find a bit of information at this link:
http://www.isleofbarra.com/news/archive8.html

It might worth contacting the Barra Youth Council to see how they went about it.

Hi
We had a meeting with a mobile phone company some time ago to look at how coverage could be improved across the Southern Uplands. We were told that each year the big mobile companies ask the local authorities (and enterprise companies I think) for their priorities so that these can be built into development plans. It seems very few local authorities respond so the companies focus on their own priorities. Perhaps some lobbying of the local authority might be useful?

We, on the Isle of Whithorn , which is 22 miles from nearest a road have been campaigning for mobile reception for years. In our case they used the excuse of terrain but we later were told it is not cost effective to place another mast , and the nearest one only covers up to 10 , miles away. We often have our main phone lines down in high wind and there is no way to summons help. Ironically we can sometimes tap into the MAnx signal if we go onto the sea front! Though that is then classified as ' roaming' with additional charges.

The Scottish Executive should be dealing with this, especially as BT are now removing lots of call boxes, so there isn't going to be anything for visitors to this very special area which relies heavily on tourism to survive. ON another note, they have recently closed all the public loos hereabouts so tourists have more immediate difficulties than mobile phones!

Again it is the total dismissal of rural communities, we dont count, we don't exist, and it is our fault no doubt for chosing to live here!

We have a vodaphone and an orange mast in our glen. Why cannot O2 put its equipment on their masts. These remote places need phones far more than built up areas. Come on Scottish Gov.

I guess you'd have to approach the individual service providers: Orange, Vodafone, O2, etc. But they're strictly commercial companies and won't install anything unless they can see a definite financial - or huge PR - opportunity.
Technically, it's also a big task. TV has the same problems: take South Wales, where there's good TV coverage - one mast covers almost the entire area, while some small valleys alone need several 'repeater' masts, at huge cost. And those were installed by the BBC, fulfilling its Charter duty to the public, not by a private company!
Mobile phone operators are also apt to quote their coverage as reaching "n% of the population" - a moment's thought reveals this to be an entirely specious model. The places where people live is not where the coverage is important - it's the places where they don't!