On one level at least, UK smartphone owners have never had it so good. Since 2018, our monthly phone bills have fallen by a third in real terms, according to Ofcom.

Heavy users have done even better: the price of a 30 gigabyte data package has more than halved in five years. Only France enjoyed lower mobile bills than the UK, the regulator found when it compared rates across major markets last year.

But bill payers see little reason to celebrate. Low prices matter little when video calls are constantly frozen or music streaming breaks for the umpteenth time.

Rising demand for mobile data and a lack of investment have brought the UK the wrong end of another international ranking.

The UK ranks 49th in the world for mobile speeds, according to network testing firm Ookla, behind Azerbaijan and Kosovo. Downloads take, on average, twice as long as in France or the US. A similar analysis last year placed Britain in 22nd place out of 25 European countries.

Britain’s backward status is not just down to its unblemished countryside. London has the worst 5G network of Europe’s major cities, according to internet monitoring company MedUX. The average download speed in the capital was slightly more than half that of Munich, the next worst city.

Customer complaints have increased. “Finding that your cell phone service has been terrible these past few weeks?” wrote one user of the social network. “I was hiking around Dover and the signal was so bad my phone started roaming in France,” said another.

Phone companies, regulators and governments have all pointed the finger at each other in a blame game about why Britain’s phone signal has become so bad. But all agree that carriers simply haven’t been able to keep up with exploding data demand.

More than 10 billion gigabytes crossed Britain’s mobile networks in 2023, the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the country playing Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic Oppenheimer 16 times. Data usage increased by 24% last year and has increased 31 times since 2013.

Longer commuting times than most rich countries, more online shopping and a reputation for receiving people means we’re putting more pressure on networks.

“It’s well known that UK consumers have an insatiable appetite for data,” says Matthew Howett, founder of telecoms analyst Assembly Research.

This exponentially growing demand means that investments in mobile networks are often underappreciated. Operators run to stand still. If exploding demand is not met with huge increases in mobile networks – multiple masts, base stations and switches – would be the equivalent of doubling the number of cars on the road without adding more lanes.

However, investment has lagged behind. More than five years after EE launched the UK’s first 5G service, less than a fifth of data connections today use 5G technology, with the vast majority still running on 4G networks first launched 12 years ago. 5G promises faster speeds and greater capacity, but the slow pace of network development means most are yet to feel the benefits.

Kester Mann, an analyst at CCS Insight, says many of the early promises of 5G, such as self-driving cars and smart cities, have not materialized, and many consumers have not been convinced of the benefits or do not have 5G. – capable phone.

“Unlike 4G, where we saw the economy of applications, the migration to 5G didn’t bring those exciting new use cases or applications, (and) the performance is only slightly better. This has discouraged adoption,” he says.

Networks that once charged extra for 5G services have since dropped their premiums and bundled the technology into existing contracts, suggesting consumers didn’t value the speed boosts enough to pay for them.

The Tory government’s belated decision to ban equipment from Chinese telecoms giant Huawei on Britain’s 5G networks has also created the costly task of destroying equipment and replacing it with often more expensive alternatives.

After previously saying Huawei equipment would be allowed on parts of the network, Boris Johnson backed down under pressure from the US and backbench MPs in 2020, giving operators until 2027 to remove what had been installed.

By then, large quantities of kit had been installed, creating a headache for the telecom business. Companies face significant fines for missing the deadline to replace Huawei equipment, meaning that replacing it often takes precedence over installing new devices.

“It was expensive and time-consuming,” says Mann. “Replacing one kit that works perfectly with others will slow things down. There was a lot of Huawei in the networks.”

Mobile UK, the industry body, also blamed the UK’s sclerotic planning system for holding back investment. 5G masts have been opposed across the country for interfering with local wildlife or, for example, ruining views of Edinburgh Castle. Gareth Elliott, a spokesman for the group, says operators are also not consulted when new development destroys existing infrastructure. The planning system can be “held to ransom by a minority of people who object”, he says.

The authorities take note. On Tuesday, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) indicated it could approve a shake-up of the industry £15 billion merger between Vodafone and Threewhich would reduce the number of UK mobile operators from four to three.

While the CMA previously expressed concern that the merger could lead to higher prices, it now says a multibillion-pound investment plan put forward by the companies could be enough to see the deal through.

Robert Finnegan, Three’s UK and Ireland chief executive, said the UK market was “dysfunctional” and “overcrowded” and that the merger of the companies would “close the 5G gap”. Vodafone and Three have promised an investment of £11 billion if the deal goes ahead, a promise the CMA is likely to hold the companies to.

Just as significantly, the regulator said the combined company’s investment would “support long-term competition”, a hint that the rivals would also need to increase their spending plans if the deal goes ahead.

Britain’s phone bills may be cheap, but the economic impact of dropped calls and unanswered emails costs us in the long run. Regulators now seem to have woken up to this fact.

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