'To put it in perspective if you want to make a mobile phone call from Atherstone to Coleshill, you might as well not bother'

Town hall bosses are messaging industry mobile giants urging them to install more phone masts after admitting making a call from the centre of Atherstone to neighbouring Coleshill is a wasted effort.

Connectivity across North Warwickshire – whether for business or pleasure – is "particularly bad", Atherstone Town Council chairman David Wright argues.

And while households in the area are close to accessing ultra high-speed broadband via gigabit technology from a Virgin media roll-out next month, Councillor Wright warned outlying areas are still "losing out" with a percentage of firms unable to run their businesses properly.

The borough council is pressing the big players to provide more joint masts for the district, Nub News has been assured.

On mobiles it's quite damning, Cllr Wright explained. "To put it in perspective if you want to make a phone call from anywhere in Atherstone to Coleshill, you might as well not bother.

"It is particularly bad across that area."

IT services for Atherstone, and right across the district, falls under his remit as Resources committee chairman on North Warwickshire Borough Council.

He confessed: "And I know that we can't even manage 3G let alone 5G as a large swathe of the borough has no phone signal at all."

As for superfast broadband some 97 per cent of the borough may be connected but councillors claim "large parts" still lack real access and they are worried about the "three per cent who aren't".

Cllr Wright added: "The three per cent are losing out.

"Outlying areas are still not getting superfast broadband, farms etcetera. They cannot run their businesses without it."

The borough council is pushing industry giants in the broadband connectivity field to act.

Chief executive Steve Maxey is due to meet BT Openreach early next month as Councillor Mark Simpson stressed: "We should do whatever we can to get industry to sign up to what they have agreed to do."

Virgin says the switch-on of its gigabit services is the largest in the UK, and will be available in Coventry, Birmingham and the surrounding areas on the borders of Warwickshire.

Customers will have to find £750 a year for the ultra high-speed connectivity but it will enable them to download an ultra-high resolution 4K film of 20 gigabytes in a little over three minutes, rather than the hour-long average connection at the present.

Meanwhile, academics at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh believe they have developed new technology to help stop passengers losing internet connections on trains.

Researchers have designed a flat panel antenna which connects to satellites in space to maintain connectivity while on the move. The prototype should be ready for field trials before the end of this year with a major rail operator.

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