I live in a relatively remote area, and from time to time problems will arise with telecommunications. I had a landline for 20 years but abandoned it 8 years ago after the internet speed dropped to 136Kps and I got a penalty charge for a fault which was eventually traced to a failure in the network. I appealed to the relevant ombudsman at the time and got the charge revoked, but decided to abandon the line completely. It has since snapped in a gale and I have no plans to have it back.

I have had a mobile phone contract since the very early days, 1994 as near as I remember, so I had the use of that, but not a smartphone in 2012, so I negotiated a contract with a different provider for a dongle to use with my laptop, and these have been my link to the outside world ever since.

In the UK the provision of mobile communications is demand-led, and here it is low relative to urban areas. It is cheaper for the phone companies to piggy back on an existing communications mast than set up individual cell sites, and since television masts are ubiquitous that happens here. All very well unless a digger (backhoe in US English, I’m told) digs through the electricity supply for the mast, as happened here once some years ago. For TV I have digital Freeview, so the first test you conduct when mobile communications fail is to check whether you still have a TV signal!

The other characteristic here is that coverage is provided by one cellular site only because of the hilly terrain, whereas in towns a device can usually switch to a different source automatically.

As of Friday morning my phone signal has failed completely. My dongle signal is affected, but it can pick up a signal from about 7 miles away under some circumstances – that’s around a bend in the hills, so it’s not ideal. Also, when sites become busy with traffic they automatically reduce the range of their coverage, on the assumption that fringe areas will get an alternative from somewhere else.

So I have sporadic internet access, enough to establish that the phone companies know there is a problem and don’t know when they can fix it.

There are of course many places round here, Snowdon Horseshoe, Nantgwynant which have no mobile coverage anyway.

You will only see this blog if I can sneak in an upload when traffic is quiet….

Update

Problems disappeared as mysteriously as they arrived at 1245 today GMT.