Coverage of the UK

What a mobile phone customer requires is coverage for their phone on their network at places they visit. To achieve this the mobile phone operators each have to cover as much of the UK as possible. It is no good for a customer if their network has no coverage when another network does have coverage.

Two measures are often used for coverage namely coverage by population and coverage by geographical area, for each of the network types [2G / 4G / 5G]. The former measure (by population) is easier to achieve than by geographical area. Currently all networks have near 100% coverage by population for their 4G networrk, but not for geographical area.

In the difficult geographical areas, which may have few homes but may have businesses that need coverage or have visitors, there is some sharing of resources such as the shared rural network scheme.

The MNO provide a way to check the coverage using maps and computer simulation. In reality in areas of marginal coverage the actual coverage may be better or worse due to geographical or structural features. Also atmospheric conditions also can affect the coverage seen by an individual phone.