Scots catching up on UK mobile use

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-busin...

The Scottish mobile market is catching up with the rest of the UK, with the proportion of people using smart phones to access the web growing from 31% to 44% in a year.

Not one mention about 2G/3G/4G coverage, or of the broadband rural divide.

But what do they use them for outside of Glasgow and Edinburgh? Coverage up in te Highlands is still abysmal even for voice.

The mobile operators should have been told - not 4G roll out until you have 99% landmass coverage for voice and 98% for 2G.

Correct me, but thought the Highlands only had about 50,000 residents, so statistically difficult to make an impact

The Highlands and Islands have a population of around 500,000.

But based on my statement a population of 1 or 1 million would be irrelevant. It is possible to drive 50 miles on major roads and have coverage for just two or three miles ... networks rarely overlap and there is no continuity on any network. Add in the Moray region - to the North of Aberdeen and the area become much much larger.

I know of many who are suffering with fixed 256k speeds or even dial up in some areas. The area needs decent mobile comms a lot more than the rest of the country needs 4G.

Found out where my 50,000 is from its the constituency area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caithness,_Sutherland_...

Confirming MHC's contribution, my lady-wife and I travelled by WiFi-equipped coach from Inverkeithing Ferrytoll Park & Ride to Aviemore earlier this year; and I made the following observations, using my ASUS Eee Netbook.

"
WiFi and Internet
As most of the long-distance and medium-distance coaches in Scotland are WiFi/Internet equipped, I took the ASUS Netbook with me - �Research�!

The WiFi/Internet connection was reasonable up to about Kelty, resuming around Perth, Pitlochry and other similar places at that southerly stretch of the A9, followed by about 50 miles of No Contact.

It then resumed through each village area of Kingussie, Newtonmore and Aviemore. In each of those areas, various versions of BT predominated, around 50%, with SKY about 40%.

The WiFi within the coach was �Four Bars� out of five, so strong enough. Thus it is the external Internet connection via roving Mobile/Cell Phone connections that is troublesome or non-existent.

When working, using BT Wholesale Tester, the speeds ranged from 600 Kbps to 1.8 Mbps.

Hence decidedly slower than at home, 15 Mbps.

I could not get my e-mail Contacts List up at all; and predictive Addressing was very intermittent, so that I generally had to resort to REPLYing to earlier, un-associated messages.

Overall, I was not impressed, unlike my previous tests about 4 years back, Ferrytoll to Edinburgh.

Just north of Perth, I did manage to get Meteociel Satellite coverage and relate the cloud margin to what I saw up in the sky, the boundary between the sunny south (for us up here) to the cloudier north.

I also accessed FlightRadar24 briefly; and the London Underground Live Trains site.
"

Some years back, I travelled by bus from Inverkeithing P&R in to Edinburgh, with contact the whole way, including SKYPE and LogMeIn to my PCs at home, carrying out various actions remotely on them, eg uploading weather data from our garden Met Station and e-mailing it as an attachment to our son, using my now-defunct ACER 101 Netbook.

Interesting reactions from other passengers during the SKYPE contact with my lady-wife, as the TV sound could be heard quite loudly in the background.

Played about using Screen Capture at both ends of the LogMeIn link, as reasonable proof of my activity.

I was amazed at the quantity and strengths of WiFi circuits observed in the middle of the FORTH Road Bridge, bearing in mind the relative "remoteness" when at the middle of that structure.

Isn't that what satellite phones are for?

The BT Wholesale speed test is not designed and scaled to be used for general speed testing

Get a little further north towards Boat of Garten, Cromdale, Advie &c and everything disappears!

Unfortunately TBB and a few other "fancy" testers would not load up, although I would have preferred to use TBB.

Additionally, what Postcode would have been relevant, whether passing relatively slowly through villages which may have several postcodes along the length of their "High Streets"; or at around 60 MPH on the more open stretches, if contact was available?

Kingussie High Street is about half-a-mile long; and has about 8 Postcodes along that length.

The BTW Tester was the only one that would load and run with some degree of success.