Can you be both a critic and a participant in a problematic situation? It’s a question VodafoneThree seems to want us to ask

A few weeks back, a major UK company added its voice to the growing chorus of stakeholders warning the country can’t really cash the cheque it’s writing for a 5G/AI/digital future: the current quality of UK mobile networks, already a “concern”, could fracture even more under the extra load asking them to support AI will bring—and that it is literally “embarrassed” at the level of quality of the networks the UK’s asked to use.

By doing so, this player joined a chorus of other concerned parties—led, though arguably not always very determinedly, by the national regulator, Ofcom, which says that mobile connectivity is “too often not good enough”, with reliability and quality remaining inconsistent despite an alleged £10bn of investment by operators since 2020.

A particular annoyance to the UK’s knowledge workers is the ongoing national embarrassment of connectivity on trains. That same body (Ofcom) says mobile performance on trains was poor on the vast majority (58%-83%) of journeys tested (June 2026 figures)—despite governments of various party politics promising to fix the issue, as we have covered.

In some ways, those figures flatter the rail companies. UK onboard Wi-Fi works properly just 1% of the time, ranking 16th out of 18 major European and Asian countries, and crawls along at 1.09 Mbps. There are some HS2 assumptions in his calculations, but British economist Daniel Susskind argued very cogently in 2024 that if the WiFi is not accessible for half of the time needed, better WiFi could “save” the UK around £376 million a year, or £10 billion over ten to 30 years.

Yes, a bit hand wavy. But his point still lands: coverage maps suggest this is a well-connected country, while the experience of using a phone often suggests otherwise. Which that major company we started with 100% agrees.

The thing is, it’s a major UK network operator. Surely some contradiction here?

Improved mobile connectivity could be really good. No Sh*t, Sherlock

Specifically, VodafoneThree (the company created by the May 2025 merger of Vodafone UK and Three UK, at a stroke reducing the number of major UK mobile network operators from four to three) is apparently shocked to say that 62% of prospective founders said poor connectivity had prevented them from starting a business locally and that “improved mobile connectivity” could “unlock” 49,000 new businesses and add £6.6bn annually to UK Plc.

The new mobile giant is also warning that Britain’s planning regime is impeding network investment, concerned that the forced removal of mobile sites during redevelopment can leave years-long gaps before replacement sites are ready, with the resulting “functional not-spots” potentially costing the capital £2.7bn a year in lost economic output. 

And in coverage of the firm’s survey, its Networks Director was moved to say that ‘If with the technology and services we use today [networks] are sub-optimal, imagine when you add mass AI usage and other associated activities.’

Growling with irritation that one of the networks that gives us such coverage should make such a claim is a forgivable immediate reaction.

What’s particularly irksome is that Vodafone seems perfectly capable of doing a great job in its other markets: it’s a global telecommunications company, it knows what good mobile infrastructure looks like in different markets because it has operated across them.

In Spain, for example, Opensignal says it offers the country’s strongest Reliability Experience score, while in the same area it’s been rapidly expanding 5G into smaller municipalities and rural areas, while its UK operation has spent years wrestling with the very coverage problems the group now says must be urgently addressed. 

So, if better mobile connectivity can be delivered elsewhere, why has the UK been allowed to become a relative laggard? Yes, the economics and regulatory environments differ from country to country: operators have consistently argued that the UK’s planning system, high costs and historically intense price competition make network investment harder to justify—and Ofcom itself recognises that rural coverage is particularly difficult because the economics are less attractive.

But for a country whose businesses increasingly depend on mobile connectivity for payments, logistics, remote working and customer contact, the question seems to increasingly be whether its networks are reliable enough to support a modern economy.

Sometimes it’s right to criticise, but it’s always better to fix

OK, that’s off our chest now. What’s to be done?

VodafoneThree is now the UK’s largest mobile operator and has promised to improve the situation, claiming it is investing £11 billion in its network over the next decade, with an ambition to reach 99% 5G Standalone population coverage by 2030. It also says that in the first year following the Vodafone-Three merger, 16,500 square kilometres of mobile notspots had already been eliminated.

That is significant progress—but it also underlines how much catching up remains to be done. Any Burnham ambitions to build a digital economy cannot get off the PowerPoint if connectivity remains intermittent across the country’s roads, rail routes, ambitious conurbations and communities.

Summing up: VodafoneThree is right to put the spotlight on our bad networks, but is part of the story, not an observer. So, let’s see if that £11 billion commitment turns critique into measurable improvement.

That can’t happen if we don’t remove the barriers around things like 5G mast planning that make that investment harder, of course. But, as Churchill needed to say in the depths of another national crisis, that of 1941, we need Action This Day… and not just flashy chest beating.