The emperor has no clothes: Mobile -- it's pretty shit when mobile

Anyone walking down today’s high street would be forgiven for assuming that the United Kingdom had a substantially advanced mobile industry. Peer into any Carphone Warehouse or Phones4U and you’ll see them festooned with mobile related gizmos and gadgets. Central to the whole concept is the understand that you can use a mobile handset to talk with another person, without any wires.

So central is the general belief, that we all automatically assume that it’s possible to talk on the mobile phone, whilst mobile. We don’t even think about it.

No one walks into Carphone Warehouse, picks up a handset, and asks at the counter, ‘Does this, er, does this handset work, you know, mobile? Can you walk around with it and still speak to people?’

Traveling from Manchester to Darlington this evening, I can definitely confirm that the emperor has no clothes. Mobile is totally shit.

This train is doing about 45 miles per hour and both T-Mobile and Three (or, Orange) have been drop calls approximately every 5 minutes, sometimes every 2 minutes. I can literally see the cell areas coming and going.

Just ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

I think it’s me that’s at fault though. I seemed to think that I could actually hold conversations whilst on the train — even a slow train.

I was actually sat in York station, NOT MOVING for 10 minutes and my call disconnected. No signal. It just disappeared. Geez.

So, yes, it’s me whose clearly at fault. Mismatched expectations.