Mobile Network Coverage

Thinking of switching?

If you’re thinking of switching to a different mobile network, it’s always a good idea to check for yourself whether the provider offers good coverage in your home area before signing up with them. This morning I visited someone who’d bought a new smartphone only last week, but was having trouble making and receiving calls. The reason was that the network he’d chosen had a very weak signal where he lived, even though the provider had wrongly told him that it’d be fine, and inside his home the smartphone more often than not said ‘No network signal’ or ‘Emergency calls only’.

Check the coverage yourself

When we used an online coverage checker ourselves, it said that the signal from the chosen provider would be weak outside the customer’s home, and probably non-existent inside. We tried using his landline-based broadband to do ‘Wi-Fi calling’, but unfortunately that didn’t work, so we had no option other than to switch to another network then ask for a refund from the original provider on the grounds that they’d misrepresented the coverage in the customer’s home area. I suppose the original provider was keen to make a sale, but the coverage checker was quite clear that the signal wouldn’t be good.