The BBC has been busy putting together the results of a nationwide survey, from which they’ve now created a map showing the “hot” and “not” spots for picking up a 3G connection in the UK ahead of the eventual introduction of 4G. The estimated 1.7-million hours of recorded results were gathered through a first-of-its-kind Android mobile app created by Epitiro.
The UK 3G Survey app from BBC and Epitiro collected 3 week’s worth of location data on its more than 46,000 downloaders (with permission) from the 12 million+ British smartphone owners. Thus creating a report of where reception is of low performance and establishing the country’s best and poorest places for a 3G service.
Gavin John of app-maker Epitiro says “For the first time consumers have the means to see 3G coverage, precisely where they live, work and travel”.
It’s quite a mixed bag of results, and doesn’t seem as black and white as the Beeb probably expected, as an analyst at Juniper Research tells “There are substantial differences in Chichester where, for example, O2 has poor coverage to the west while Vodafone has issues in the east. There is probably a correlation to their base station configurations. When these networks were rolled out there was not the attention paid to planning and so networks aren’t as efficient as they should be.”
The survey did, however, reveal that our networks might not be entirely honest on the kind of 3G delivery we can expected from our mobile providers. The suggested 90% is actually found to be closer to 75%.
The UK 3G Survey app was supported on Twitter by comic-actor Stephen Fry, who no doubt has helped boost the apps cred. The regular tweeter commands 2,839,734 followers and praised the app with his 140-characters-or-less. But many of the app-licants complained that the survey robbed the smartphone of its valuable battery life.
The full map compiled following the UK 3G Survey can be explored on the BBC website.
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