Mobile Blackspots Map for the UK

We are huge fans of the fact that Vodafone will start advertising femtocells. Its impressive to see Vodafone stepping up and taking the industry lead educating consumers about the new products to consumers in the UK using the brand Sure Signal. Vodafone's Sure Signal guarantees you a great 3G signal at home, no matter where you live and promotes the fact it might be an emergency risk if you are living in a coverage hole. This is something the U.S. carriers have tried their hardest to ignore. See their promotions and web site above and watch the stories of people from around the UK who have been rescued from their mobile signal problems. I am quite proud of a carrier finally admitting that they have coverage holes and giving consumers the ability to do something about it. Kudos to Vodafone UK!

It will remain to be seen if the U.S. carriers still want to "blow smoke" up our asses with their ridiculous commercials touting their great coverage. AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint & T-Mobile have been dragging their feet for years "testing" femtocells in the U.S. and not educating their customers that they actually exist. It also amazes me that Vodafone owns 45% of Verizon in the US yet it seems so against Verizon's arrogant culture to admit they actually have coverage problems with their network. Do you think Verizon's marketing executives who came up with their moronic coverage map promotion commercials are going to be able to keep their jobs or are they going to have to do an "About-Face" (look in opposite direction) if they start selling femtocells in the U.S.? Hmmmm . . . we shall see.

As a result of Vodafone's leadership Deadzones.co.uk has launched a new "Consumer Generated Mobile Blackspots Map" asking where mobile customers don't have problem areas indoors and outdoors. Even if Sure Signal can solve the problem indoors at your home or office there are still many bad patch locations around the UK. We ask for users to contribute pins in our map for 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Please also see this UK Blackspots Facebook discussion board we started under Vodafone's profile.

Find this map at Deadzones.co.uk & Deadcellzones.com/uk.html

3 comments

Anonymous // February 25, 2010

I have heard Vodafone has had challenges deploying and activating.
Roger Wynd // March 03, 2010

Our MD, had a coverage problem (the local cell site failed due I believe to rodents)She was sent, FOC, a femtocell which failed activate. After 3 days a replacement was dispatched and eventually activated, but assistance from vodafone was needed to achieve this
Anonymous // March 04, 2010

Voda were doing a softlaunch from June to January and provisioning was a big part of that.

But the full launch as SureSignal things seem to be very much smoother. There are bound to be some issues but most feedback seems to be 'wow - it just works'

Anecdotal (asking friends, asking the shop asistatnts). Or if you look at Twitter comments as a "market research survey" nearly all are very positive.

Or, of course, a lot say "I'm on O2 / Orange - why can't I have one?"