I get my mobile phone service from EE, supposedly the outfit with the best geographical coverage in the UK. That's important: I live in the sticks, drive about the Sussex countryside almost daily, and, as readers will know, regularly take off all over the country with my little caravan in tow. I want to stay in touch all the time, and expect a usable mobile internet service in most places. Certainly at home! But since mid-morning on Saturday 3rd June I haven't been able to get the usual 4G service in my boudoir.
EE were on it, and sent me messages almost at once, speaking of a problem at my local mast.
Well, I'd like to drive over there and have a word. Just as you can when BT Openreach (or whoever) are fiddling about at one of the green cabinets up the road. But I can't. All these service providers keep their mast locations secret for security reasons. So I have to rely on intermittent updates by text, which don't say much. I pick them up when away from the village, at some spot where the lucky locals can take their mobile phone service for granted.
I have already lodged a complaint and told EE that I will claim compensation. I did that fourteen months ago, after storms damaged the local mast and I was without any service for several days. Like now, I do appreciate it wasn't EE's fault or intention that I should be incommunicado at home, having to travel elsewhere to pick up and send messages, and do things on the Internet. But we had a contract, and they were in breach of it. And indeed they readily agreed to waive a month's direct debit payment as recompense, which seemed proportionate compensation for the actual inconvenience the incident caused me. I will expect at least that this time.
Complaining has elicited a little more information about what's wrong. Apparently there is a 'health and safety' issue at the mast that is currently preventing the engineers fixing the problem. EE don't say what that is. Have they had a fire? Is an escaped tiger occupying the electronics hut? Who knows.
Yesterday they told me that the next update would be a week ahead. Really? It looks as if I'll be on the road to Lincolnshire by the time they send the text.
I don't of course have home broadband to fall back on. I got rid of that a couple of years ago for reasons I explained at the time, chiefly that it was costing too much for the limited use I made of it. There's now no working landline - I had that disconnected when cancelling the broadband. It was only a rubbishy copper-wire connection, decades old, that was way past its best. If I ever want a physical connection again, it will have to be a spanking new fibre-optic one, right into my home. But what's the point, when I'm away so much, and most of the time 4G is good enough for all my needs? In any case, I'm a keen believer in wireless-only.
This post is going out courtesy of my next door neighbours, who have kindly let me use their own home broadband, via Wi-Fi, for situations like this. But of course it's a kindness, a lovely favour not to be abused. I'm rationing myself. Mostly, I drive off to Burgess Hill and do what I need to in the car park next to the mast in the town centre there, which is fenced in and not secret. It puts out a 100% 4G signal to my phone. That's great, but it's a bind having to make a special trip there, and sitting alone in my car is not a thing I'd want to do after dark. Nor if I felt unwell.
I'm in robust good health at the moment, but I won't always be so chipper. For the future, for the times when a runny nose, or lashing rain outside, makes me reluctant to fire up Fiona for another session in Burgess Hill, I think I should consider taking forward a possible enhancement to using 4G at home.
I can have a 4G/5G aerial installed on my chimney outside, connected to a special router indoors. That will pick up a much better signal than my mobile phone ever can unaided. Indeed, a signal from more than one mast. There would be an installation cost, of course; and the ongoing expense of a suitable data-only SIM card, just for that router. Still, the router's SIM card could be quite cheap - I never consume that much data. The monthly cost of it would certainly be less than a conventional broadband contract. Something for later in the year, then, when the caravanning season has finished and I'm home for the winter.
I can also buy a portable router, with little aerials like a DAB radio, that would sit on a window sill. Again, with its own data-only SIM card. That might work too, although not as well as a proper fixed installation with a high-up external chimney aerial. On the other hand, I could take it with me on holiday.
Meanwhile, I hope that EE have snared that tiger.
