Why is London’s phone signal so bad right now?

If you’ve been thinking that your phone signal is really bad at the moment, you wouldn’t be the only one. And it turns out that it’s not just hearsay, the phone signal in London, and the rest of the UK, really is worse than it used to be these days. 

An investigation into phone signal in the UK by the i has revealed that our mobile network infrastructure desperately needs upgrading, but there isn’t enough investment to do it. 

Andy Aitken, co-founder of Honest mobile network, said: ‘We’re not upgrading our telecom infrastructure to keep up with more devices and users.

‘Planning regulations in the UK make [putting up new telephone masts] difficult, which makes a huge difference in how effectively 5G can be rolled out.’

As well as there not being enough 5G towers, the ones that we do have are struggling to operate due to restrictions placed on Huawei by the government amid security concerns a few years ago. Without their tech, we’ve found it more difficult to get our networks running successfully and efficiently. 

And London has been particularly badly affected by the UK-wide problem. An investigation by the newsletter London Centric found that it is much harder to build new phone masts in the capital than elsewhere in the country due to complaints from locals. 

Essentially, the report revealed that local councillors are politically incentivised not to build more phone masts, because constituents believe them, perhaps dubiously, to be health hazards, and ugly. For instance, Mitcham residents are fighting to stop a mast being built that will ‘cast a shadow’ over a village green. 

To cut a long story short, we need new masts, but local authorities are faced with a catch-22 situation of residents complaining of bad phone signal, but also complaining if new masts are built. We recommend reading investigative journalist Jim Waterson’s report on the issue in London to get the full picture. 

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