Why is the UK's mobile phone coverage so bad?

A report this week ranked Britain's 4G service behind Romania and Peru. It's not quite as simple as that, but patchy signal is still a problem in plenty of the country

Is the UK's 4G mobile phone coverage really worse than Romania, Albania and Peru, as a report suggested last week?
Yes and no. The report by the National Infrastructure Commission used data on how much of the time a person's mobile is connected to 4G. On that measure, the UK scores worse than 53 countries, many of which we might expect to have far worse mobile networks - not just Romania, Albania and Peru, but also Georgia, Latvia and Mexico. UK phones were connected to 4G barely half the time.

But the rankings didn't measure geographical coverage, ie where you can get a signal, or speeds, which will vary even on a solid 4G connection. According to the same researchers who produced the data on availability, the UK ranks 29th globally for average speed, and in terms of 4G coverage of where people live and work, in 2015 Ofcom put the UK ahead of all the EU's largest economies except Germany.