Ofcom isn’t happy with EE and Vodafone’s coverage predictions

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has opened separate investigations into coverage predictions offered up by EE and Vodafone.

In what seems like a fairly pedantic move Ofcom has announced it’s looking into information provided by the two MNOs when it asked them to say how much of the country they expect to cover. Bizarrely EE is suspected of overestimating its 3G coverage, while Vodafone may have under-predicted its 4G coverage.

Why any of this matters is unclear. Ofcom uses these estimates for its own studies into UK mobile coverage, which are ultimately politically sensitive due to the tendency for politicians to grandstand on behalf of those people with dodgy coverage. It’s possible that Ofcom is getting political heat and is looking for scapegoats. Here are the two Ofcom statements.

“On 1 October 2018, Ofcom opened an investigation into EE’s compliance with requests for 3G mobile coverage predictions across the UK under these rules. This followed on from the identification by Ofcom of errors in the 3G/2100 MHz coverage data that EE provided which meant that its 3G coverage was over-predicted, particularly in rural areas.”

“On 1 October 2018, Ofcom opened an investigation into Vodafone’s compliance with requests for 4G mobile coverage predictions across the UK under these rules. This followed on from the identification by Ofcom of errors in the 4G/800 MHz coverage data that Vodafone provided which meant that its 4G coverage was under-predicted, particularly in rural areas.”

As indicated by the beeb, the operators will claim some combination of innocence, mitigation and contrition, so it’s hard to imagine anything significant resulting from these probes. Maybe Ofcom just likes to throw this sort of thing at operators every now and then just to keep them on their toes.