UK mobile phone coverage worse than Romania, Peru: report

4G mobile phone coverage in the UK has been rated as being worse than that of Albania, Panama, Peru and Romania, with users able to connect less than half the time, a government infrastructure watchdog has found.

The National Infrastructure Commission released a new report, which said the UK was being held back by poor mobile phone connectivity, as it called for an end to ''digital deserts'' in places that needed adequate signals such as rail routes, roads and city centres.

Countries including the US and Japan already had data volumes four to five times higher than the UK, the report said.

According to the commission, chaired by Andrew Adonis, the crossbench peer and former Labour minister, the government now needed to ensure that the next generation of 5G spectrum did not have the failures that dogged 4G coverage.

''Britain is 54th in the world for 4G coverage, and the typical user can only access 4G barely half the time,'' Adonis said.

Adonis explained, ''Our 4G network is worse than Romania and Albania, Panama and Peru. Our roads and railways can feel like digital deserts and even our city centres are plagued by not spots where connectivity is impossible.

''That isn't just frustrating, it is increasingly holding British business back as more and more of our economy requires a connected workforce.''

Several countries that received UK aid also had better networks, including India and Indonesia, the National Infrastructure Commission found.

It added that over 8,000 miles of the UK's A and B roads had no signal at all.

In addition, the latest 4G signals needed to make full use of mobile internet services were available in only a fifth of homes outside Britain's major cities.

In the report, the NIC said the market was failing consumers and called on ministers to stop the UK's further slide as the mobile industry moved on  to super fast 5G technology – the fifth generation of mobile internet networks.

Adonis said that although the UK was "languishing in the digital slow lane", the rollout of 5G technology was an opportunity for the government to "start again".