No mobile coverage on more than 200 miles of North Yorkshire’s roads
DRIVERS WHO break down on North Yorkshire roads have among the poorest chance of calling for help in the country as more than 200 miles are without mobile phone coverage, according to a new study.
Some 5,540 miles of road – representing about two per cent of all roads – do not have coverage for calls from any of the country’s four mobile networks, the RAC Foundation found.
The top 10 local authorities most affected include Highland with 910 miles, Powys with 411 miles and Cumbria with 296 miles. North Yorkshire is in at sixth place, with 219 miles lacking coverage. A further 44,368 miles of road have only partial voice coverage, with not all operators providing a signal.
Motorists who rely on their smartphones to access the internet for route planning and to check for congestion could get into difficulty on the 5,452 miles of road with a complete absence of 3G coverage.
An additional 66,619 miles are only covered for 3G by some operators. In terms of 4G, just 51 per cent of the road network has full coverage.
Steve Gooding, the director of the RAC Foundation, which carried out the study of data from the regulator Ofcom, said nearly motorways were all but covered, but there was still “work to be done to make constant and comprehensive coverage a reality”.