Black Spots, Not Spots And Shadows

There's an interesting piece in the Telegraph from Monday regarding mobile phone coverage in the UK. Despite that during the 1980's the UK, along with other European nations, were leading the way in GSM standardization, rollout of subsequent technologies such as 3G, since telecoms has become an EU competence, has been less than satisfactory:

There is little more debilitating in a supposedly digital world than the mobile black spots that still plague so many parts of the UK. These are the areas where mobile phones don’t have a signal, and where it is therefore impossible to make voice calls or send texts. Almost as bad are the even larger areas with no 3G reception (let alone 4G, of course) and where it is therefore impossible to access the internet from smartphones or tablets on the move.

It's certainly no secret that UK mobile phone 3G coverage is poor in many areas of the country, particularly in comparison with other countries. Cornwall for example which is a popular tourist destination has long suffered with sub-standard coverage - Orange (now part of EE) being one of the only operators for some time to attempt to provide a decent mobile signal. An article in Tech Advisor from May this year expressed a view that in general 3G coverage in the UK was "embarrassing".

OFCOM, under The Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006 required that by June 2013 the four mobile phone license holders meet and maintain a 90% population 3G coverage, three providers met the target with only Vodafone missing its target by 1.4% by the deadline - only to meet it this year.

Yet despite the 90% coverage claim there are reasons why 90% coverage doesn’t really mean that at all. To achieve coverage of 90% of the population the networks only really need to cover the most populated areas of the country, leaving rural areas scorned. As the Guardian noted in December 2013:

Today, 80% of the population can get a signal from all of the four operators – EE, O2, 3 and Vodafone – but geographically it remains very patchy, with just 21% of the landmass being served by all four. Nearly 23% of the UK has no 3G at all, and in nearly 13% of the country making any kind of mobile call is impossible.

The lack of 3G coverage begins to matter when we consider that with the growth of smartphones, data and the demand for broadband is far outstripping voice as the main means of communication on the move. The graph below (click to enlarge) from the Ericsson Mobility Report, released in June 2013 illustrates this acutely:

At this point we could be mischievous and, using the criteria set in terms of coverage based on population by OFCOM, compare the UK with North Korea which since 2011 has had a 3G coverage of 94% in terms of population served. On this basis it could be argued that North Korean mobile coverage is better than the UK's. The North Korean network (Koryolink) is provided by the Egyptian international telecommunications company Orascom, with officially 10% of North Koreans (2 million) being subscribers, though the figure may be much higher due to the practice common in poorer countries of renting phones out to family and friends to share the costs.

With poor coverage in the UK it is understandably that the government is keen to improve 3G coverage at the very least. This though has prompted what appears to be a dispute in government between Sajid_Javid of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport arguing for better UK coverage...

I’m determined to ensure the UK has world-class mobile phone coverage as investment in infrastructure will help drive this government’s long-term economic plan.

It can’t be right that in a fifth of the UK, people cannot use their phones to make a call. The government isn’t prepared to let that situation continue.

...and the Home Secretary, Teresa May, who seems to be unwilling to reveal "not spots" as reported by the Times (£):

A confidential letter from the home secretary, seen by The Times, advises that plans by Sajid Javid to make mobile phone companies improve their coverage threaten to damage the ability of intelligence agencies to thwart plots.

With this in mind we probably for security reasons shouldn't mention that a notable "not-spot" is RAF Menwith Hill with its oversized golf balls in North Yorkshire:

Here, and in surrounding areas, mobile phone coverage drops off the end of a cliff. No mobile phone signal is usually possible when close by.

One of the proposals by the government to counter the lack of 3G coverage, (and not unsurprisingly a top down 'solution') is new legislation to force "providers to introduce network roaming across Britain, ensuring that customers automatically switch networks when they have no signal from their usual provider":

National roaming – phones would roam onto another network’s signal when theirs was not available. This is similar to what happens when you’re abroad.

Infrastructure sharing – mobile networks would be able to put transmitters on each other's masts.

But again this demonstrates that technology is simply marching on far ahead of regulators and government. Not only costing the sharing of private mobile networks will be a nightmare, by the time any kind of legislation is invoked technology will have moved on.

With the release of the new Apple's iPad Air 2, is the emergence of a programmable SIM card (backed by standards set by the ETSI) which will allow users to switch mobile network providers and plans at the touch of the button which could be the first step towards freeing mobile devices from restrictive mobile contracts, allowing users to switch carrier just by selecting an option in settings.

Thus government legislation may prove to be unnecessary...

Not Voting

For some today there are local council elections but in the words of the 'unbiased' BBC the "big one" across the country is the EU elections:

"There are local council elections in England and Northern Ireland - but the big one this year is the European election on the same day."

I've noted before that I have always been a reluctant participant in any EU elections. To do so is to legitimise a system I completely and fundamentally disagree with. The EU would actually rather have copious numbers of UKIP MEPs in the EU Parliament on the back of high participation than a low turnout altogether. A high turnout would act as a comforting safety valve for the EU - it means citizens are participating. A sentiment which can be seen by the reaction from 2004 after a low turnout (my emphasis):

"A wake-up call" is the way the current President of the European Parliament Pat Cox described this week's [EU Parliament] election results; the Dutch used the word "disaster".

But working out what went wrong is now crucial to working out how to put it right.

Officials labelled the turnout "pathetically low" in the new states, as ministers warned the political credibility of the whole EU was now at stake.

The election simply left most voters cold from Portugal to Poland. Where they did vote, most people chose to punish their governments or to promote Eurosceptic parties.

Certainly the elections were a shock for the political elite across Europe in the wake of the recent enlargement which they thought would provide renewed vitality for the European project.

With this in mind I have decided not to vote today. Previously I have done in Euro elections for UKIP and I did so through very gritted teeth (no reflection on UKIP at the time) for pragmatic reasons. I took the view that in order for UKIP to break through into the UK Parliamentary system the EU elections gave an opportunity for much publicity and funding to make a difference domestically against an unfair system.

As a result, despite UKIP's many failings, its current position in terms of dominating the media is somewhat of an achievement. It's worth noting that hardly any party in UK history has managed to break through the stranglehold that a two party system entails. One rare but obvious example is the rise of Labour in the late 19th Century.

However I've come to the conclusion that UKIP's rise is less a reflection of the party's competence more of an example of a 'canary down the mine' regarding our electoral system. Less of a solution and more of a warning of what's to come. A warning that came via the paper in 1971 named FCO 30/1048:

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government.

Despite EU funds, the potential opportunity of UKIP finally "breaking through" properly has been squandered and it has been squandered for years. The significant funding has not resulted in a UKIP research department, a decent UKIP website and a coherent unified policy on how to exit.

Such a vacuous intellectual void leads to confusion and argument among UKIP supporters, acutely demonstrated by Suzanne Evans when interviewed by Andrew Neil. As Complete Bastard notes one UKIP activist even argued:

"Personally, I think it would be an alienating and self-indulgent mistake for UKIP to waste its limited resources on the withdrawal mechanism at this time."

Limited resources? I'm not sure Farage struggles with 'limited' resources that prevent a policy on how to exit. And of course seventeen unpaid volunteers (helped by many others) produced exit plans within four months for the IEA prize - UKIP has been going for twenty years and has still failed to produce one. What a pathetic excuse.

Given then UKIP are failing to provide policy on exiting the EU, we have to consider then what is the point of voting in Euro elections. "People died for your right to vote" is sometimes the cry. Yet the right to vote and democracy are not the same thing. It's not a right to mark a piece of paper that counts but what that mark can achieve. The crucial question is always can we throw out the executive?

In terms of the Euro elections we can't  - the executive is with the EU Commission whose Presidential elections are being held with no real reference to the "citizens" of Europe. As an example of ballot paper impotency, the people of North Korea have the right to vote via a piece of paper regarding elections to the People's Supreme Assembly, but no-one in their right mind would argue that makes FatBoy-Kim democratically accountable.

As Richard North observes regarding the Euro elections:

Certainly, there is nothing "democratic" about Mr Cameron's "top table", the Council of Ministers. There, when a vote is called, qualified majority voting (QMV) applies. Britain has 29 votes out of 352, representing eight percent of the vote. A qualified majority is 252 votes (73.9 percent), leaving Britain with a structural deficit of 223 votes.

However, in the European Parliament, the situation is little better. There are 73 UK MEPs, and these represent a mere 9.7 percent of the 751 elected MEPs (post-2014 election). Given the party splits, this level of representation is notional. UK MEPs rarely vote together as a single bloc. Even if they did, they could never muster the 376 votes needed for a majority.

Furthermore, the powers of the Parliament and the Council are limited in important but poorly recognised ways. As an increasing number of laws come into being via international standards, these are most often implemented by the EU as delegated legislation (Commission Regulations) using the comitology procedure.

Every year, more than 2,500 measures are processed via this route, passing through one or more of the 200-300 committees set up for the purpose. That is approximately 30 times more measures than are processed via the mainstream ordinary legislative procedure.

The impotence of the EU Parliament could not be better expressed than by the fact that if every one of the 73 MEPs elected from the UK were UKIP candidates, they simply could not execute their manifesto on behalf of their voters and remove the UK from the EU.

That point brings me neatly on UKIP's exit policy. Aside from having no plan, we see from Autonomous Mind that UKIP intends to remain de facto members of the EU:

...An article today in the Financial News (£) might just explain why there is no exit plan for leaving the EU… UKIP is apparently developing a carefully crafted secret weapon that would see the UK stay inside the Customs Union!  Not inside the internal market, but inside the Customs Union and negotiating its own trade agreements:

As can be clearly seen from this Wikipedia page Turkey's 'customs union' is EU membership by default. I have tweeted and emailed Tim Aker (supposedly head of UKIP's policy) to clarify the party's position to as yet no response.

With UKIP failing to exploit their position as EU MEPs for domestic reasons - instead for personal gain - it's very difficult to not conclude that to vote UKIP today merely puts more of Farage's 'mates' on the gravy train thus shoring up his position. The EU quite deliberately makes expenses, or should I say allowances, easy to claim - it encourages people to go "native". And that is what exactly happens.

UKIP may win the Euro elections, but it will have no bearing on our exit, it will be irrelevant and nothing will change. But I guess it will give a few more MEPs a comfortable salary and pension.