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The truths they don't want you to read....

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Mobile phone reception

A source close to the Parliamentary Office advises that the 'mapping' (sic) of mobile reception along the spinal route by the office staff is worse than useless.

The source suggests that the locations are at best approximate, and do not take into account all the service providers available.

"It is", quoth the source, "Like using a child's drawing of a cow to make the case for increased subsidy."
The chief telecoms advisor
As the map has been made with public money, why haven't the media asked to see the detail of this exercise in pointless futility, especially when excellent (and more accurate) maps already exist.

Perhaps the first questions should be: who was (allegedly) actually in this vehicle when 4 networks were being inaccurately mapped simultaneously?

12 comments:

Siareachruadh said...

Remember the extortionate price of Jaffa Cakes in Barra scandal our esteemed MP broke a few weeks ago, to the admiration of our local press. Well this is what they largely ignored:

http://www.wiftra.org/documents/HEBFULLREP.pdf

A well presented and inclusive report by local residents. It was blatant opportunism and jingoistic populism by a man who is more interested in lost property than his constituents.

Anonymous said...

That's a useful and interesting report. (Reads more)

WTF? 1 in 8 people on Barra (who responded to the survey, anyway) do most of their food shopping ... in Tesco in Oban. Which is a FIVE hour ferry ride to the mainland. That needs some consideration. Anyone from Barra who does that want to expand on why?

Anonymous said...

Hi anonymous that was followed up by myself they tended to shop online then pick it up once a month and for friends and family too. There are groups who do this as a matter of course for the elderly as Tesco will pack them into the green boxes. They used to put them on the ferry for a fiver and they would be picked up at the other side but this was stopped for some reason. This does not mean they do all their shopping there of course or that they do most of their shopping there but that they prefer it to shopping in the Coop. This might not be as good a way of collecting information as buying a pack of Jaffa Cakes but it does give cause for thought.

Anonymous said...

10:26 That figures, yes. Several years ago some of the residents of North Uist and Berneray figured out a way of doing an online Tesco shop in Inverness and getting it brought over, via third-person courier. Understandable, as the shopping on North Uist was poor and on Berneray terrible (though this may have improved with the new shop owners). The nearest good (choice, quality especially for fruit and veg, price) shop was MacLennans in Balivanich.

This service got stopped after a while. Different reasons were stated why, and it was a bit fishy. I gather it's been restarted in a more official and proper way and, tho' still cumbersome, is working okay. Would have been much better if Tesco had opened even a small shop in or near Lochmaddy. A few reps from there did come over and have a look, but they reckoned it wouldn't be profitable unless it was much closer to, or in, Benbecula. Oh well; we can still hope...

Anonymous said...

Did anyone get the link to work for the existing map coverage ?

I tried to find orange's coverage which is dire in Lewis on my HTC but the map returns a blank page.

http://ukmobilecoverage.co.uk/map/orange

Anonymous said...

Just a minor point, but the MP says in his press release on Ofcom that "to put this in perspective the London metropolitan area contains nearly 20 percent of the population of the UK while the Outer Hebrides contains .00004 percent".

0.0004% of the UK population is 24. Have a lot of islanders left in the past couple of days?

Angus said...

Maybe we're getting a mast each?

Angus said...

Actually 0.0004% of 60,000,000 is 240 people, so it might be that we have to share some of the masts.

I wonder what Ofcom made of that statistic?

Anonymous said...

2.32pm here again to apologise. I'm nearly as stupid as the MP

You're right, Angus, on 0.0004% (I missed a "0") but the MP made it 0.00004%, or 24 people, so no sharing required! YAY! In fact, in some of the more geograhically remote areas of the islands, they may have two masts each.

Anonymous said...

In MacNeil's defence, he taught English badly in Castlebay School, rather than Maths incompetently.

Anonymous said...

When Cameron put Macneil down this week, do you think was talking about the views of 680% or 6.8% of the Scottish voters?

Anonymous said...

Was the original government money, when the masts were first put in place, not given on the basis that the spinal route through the islands had full and complete coverage, which raises the question why the companies were paid when they didn't achieve the terms of the contract?