Purest-ever silicon in quantum fix

12 August 2014 Last updated at 01:36 By Jonathan Webb Science reporter, BBC News

In a quantum computer, pure silicon is not enough - only one specific type of silicon atom will do.

The good stuff is silicon-28, and physicists in the US have worked out how to produce it with 40 times greater purity than ever before.

Even better, they can do it in the lab instead of relying on samples made ten years ago in a huge, repurposed plutonium plant in St Petersburg.

This promises to solve a serious supply problem in quantum computing research.

Several of the most promising schemes for building a quantum computer are based in silicon. One that has received much attention stores "qubits" in atoms of another element, like phosphorous, embedded in a tiny layer of ultra-pure silicon-28.

Continue reading the main story

We had an apparatus whose purpose had come to an end, and we had a problem that needed solving, and we married them up"

End Quote Dr Joshua Pomeroy National Institute of Standards and Technology, Maryland

Qubits are the quantum replacement for bits - the ones and zeros that represent information inside a conventional computer. They promise to usher in a new era of computing because they can simultaneously encode a one and a zero, enabling incredibly fast and complex calculations.

The difficulty for silicon-based designs is that normal silicon contains quite a lot of atoms that aren't silicon-28. Almost 8% of a commercial silicon wafer is made up of other isotopes like silicon-29, which would cause interference in a quantum chip.

"It leads to decoherence, which is sort of like ADD in computers," explained Dr Joshua Pomeroy, one of the physicists behind the new work, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland.

Researchers in this field, like Dr Pomeroy, have been relying on off-cuts of enriched silicon-28 that all started out in Russia.

The St Petersburg facility is a repurposed plutonium enrichment plant, housing industrial-scale gas centrifuges which were commissioned in 2004, by German scientists, to produce a sample of silicon-28 with 99.99% purity.

That sample was used to crystallise 5kg of the stuff, at a cost of around one million euros, for an international effort to calculate Avogadro's number from 1kg, perfect spheres of silicon-28.

Waste material from this project has been almost the only global source of this high-quality silicon ever since.

Dr Pomeroy explained that the quantum community "can't command the resources" to commission that type of production. "It's fortuitous that the Avogadro project existed," he told the BBC.

"So there's sort of a nervousness - when they wrap up finally, and they're not buying any more of it, what are we going to do?"

But Dr Pomeroy and his colleagues have now shown that small amounts of silicon-28, enriched to an unprecedented 99.9998%, can be produced using equipment already found in many labs.

Small but perfectly formed

They managed the feat with kit that is normally used for mass spectrometry - a technique for identifying a substance based on the weight of the different atoms it contains. By pumping ions of silicon through a big magnetic field, the different isotopes (atoms of silicon with different weights) can be separated from each other, because heavier atoms are diverted less by the magnet than lighter ones.

Dr Pomeroy said this was an unexpectedly simple solution. "We had what often happens in science, which is that we had an apparatus whose purpose had come to an end. And we had a problem that needed solving, and we married them up."

The thin films of silicon-28 that his team can produce are very, very pure - but also very small.

"It's much more difficult to produce large quantities," Dr Pomeroy concedes, "but particularly in the research phase, those quantities are largely unnecessary."

Despite some controversial commercial initiatives, quantum computers primarily remain a field of research. And according to Dr Pomeroy, the new approach is more than capable of delivering enough of the purer-than-pure silicon for scientists to test out their designs.

Importantly, researchers around the world could potentially make it in their own labs.

"We're recognising that we don't need to produce an entire wafer's worth of silicon-28 that's enriched," he said. "We only really need to make enough to insulate the computer from the rest of the wafer."

The team's research was published in the Journal of Physics D.

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Software smoothes shaky video clips

11 August 2014 Last updated at 12:08

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This video from Microsoft shows the "hyperlapse" technology in action

Help is at hand for anyone who has shot a shaky video while cycling, climbing, kayaking or engaging in any other high-speed sport.

Microsoft researchers have found a way to stabilise films and speed them up to make them more watchable.

To fix the images, the software analyses footage and creates new frames to smooth out camera jumps.

The team is currently working on ways to turn the research into a Windows application.

First-person videos shot on wearable cameras such as the GoPro were becoming more popular, said the researchers, but could be "dead boring" to watch at normal speed and almost unwatchable when sped up, because of the exaggerated camera-shake that caused.

While image-stabilisation software was already available, such programs typically did a poor job of coping with sped-up footage of any significant length, said the computer scientists in a webpage documenting their work.

To solve the problem, the "hyperlapse" software, developed by Johannes Kopf, Michael Cohen and Richard Szeliski, subjects footage to a three-stage process.

The first analyses a video to spot significant features in each scene and create a very approximate reconstruction of the part of the world the camera travelled through.

The second stage involves working out the smoothest path the camera could take through this virtual reconstruction.

The third part of the process renders a film in which the camera travels this smoother path.

At this stage, extra frames are generated and added to remove jumps in the original footage and to fill in around the smooth path of the camera.

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Microsoft unveils £15 mobile phone

11 August 2014 Last updated at 12:35 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Microsoft has announced a low cost mobile phone that lacks a data connection, meaning it cannot offer any of the firm's internet services.

The Nokia 130 is priced at 19 euros ($25; £15).

The launch comes a month after a leaked memo revealed that Microsoft planned to kill off several of its low-cost phone families to "focus on" its more expensive Windows Phone range.

But the firm said that it was still committed to its most basic range.

"This is a massive market segment, and there are not a lot of players in this segment for the reason that scale is really important," Jo Harlow, head of Microsoft's phones business, told the BBC.

"We have the distribution and supply chain scale to compete effectively in this market.

"This is a space where smartphones today don't reach, so there is still very strong benefits to our business."

Ms Harlow said that Microsoft was targeting the device at low wage earners in emerging markets, but added that despite its low price, the firm should profit on the handset after deducting manufacturing and marketing costs.

They will be sold with other budget handsets running the Series 30+ operating system, which Microsoft acquired as part of its takeover of Nokia's handset division in April.

Ms Harlow confirmed, however, that the firm had called a halt to releasing further Asha and Android-powered Nokia X handsets - platforms that have the added ability of allowing users to install apps from Microsoft and third-party developers.

The phased-out ranges had previously been marketed as stepping stones to Nokia's more expensive and more powerful Lumia-branded Windows Phone handsets.

But one industry watcher suggested that they had been squeezed out by the competition.

"Microsoft will have done a business case for the new phone, and it knows that it is one of the top players in terms of volume in the 'feature phone' space," said Ben Wood, chief of research at the consultancy CCS Insight.

"The problem with Asha and X phone was that they were cannibalised completely by low-cost Android.

"Microsoft may only make tiny amounts of money per Nokia 130 device, but you have to look at the volume, which is millions and millions of units.

"They won't be losing money on them, that's the point. On the Asha and X products there was no clear business model."

Microsoft's marketing materials for the new handset note that a recent study indicated more than 300 million sub-$35 (£21) contract-free handsets were sold a year.

Samsung, India's Micromax and the Chinese firm TCL offer rival "ultra-affordable" phones of their own.

The Nokia 130's lack of data connectivity means that it will not be able to take part in Microsoft's wider "cloud first" strategy.

However, the 1.8in (4.6cm)-screened phone will be one of the cheapest handheld devices capable of playing back video thanks to its ability to read files saved to a Micro SD card.

The device will be sold in China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and Vietnam, but there are no plans to release it in the UK.

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Complaint site aids angry customers

11 August 2014 Last updated at 16:58

People angry with companies and governments can now share their pain via a crowd-sourced complaints site.

Created by notorious tech entrepreneur John McAfee, the Brownlist aims to find solutions for people treated badly by organisations.

Mr McAfee said the site was a way to channel impotent anger into something more positive.

Ultimately, he said, the site could spur direct action against arrogant firms to make them change their ways.

Anger management

The site was unveiled by Mr McAfee during a surprise visit to the DefCon hacker conference in Las Vegas.

"We are doing this because it taps in to the strongest of human emotions, anger, and it does it in a way that turns it positive," he said.

Currently a crude prototype of the finished version of the site was up and running, said Mr McAfee as he invited people to post complaints to the site.

"If you are a small person, like the average American, and some company steps on you or a government, you speak out against something and you are audited the next day, come to our site," he said.

However, he added, people could not just use the Brownlist to rant. Instead, anyone posting a complaint had to also detail a way for their grievance to be fixed.

The different solutions to outstanding problems would be voted on and staff on the site would then work to enact that solution, he said.

"We know that the strongest motivator of human behaviour is anger, and it is also the thing that destroys societies, families and individuals," Mr McAfee told the BBC. "We also know we are losing our power to big corporations and big governments."

"The Brownlist is a way to take back your power," he said. "We can help put people in control of their own lives. Just think of where this could go."

Susan Hall, a partner in the information and communications technology practice at law firm Clarke Willmott, said US laws on freedom of speech would provide some defence but the site could stumble if it a lot of people signed up.

"Depending on what people post and what they say, there might be an argument to say they are infringing on registered trademarks," she said. Individuals were unlikely to face such a claim if they wrote about a complaint in isolation but posting it on a site making money off such information might qualify, she said.

In addition, she said, there were potentially issues of harassment involved as well as libel if the site was not diligent about investigating the complaints that people posted.

Finally, she said, some of the companies being complained about might react poorly to the postings and seek relief in the courts.

"It's becoming an increasing issue that people are being sued on the basis of a bad review," she said.

An unnamed investor had provided start-up capital for the site and its ongoing revenues would come from companies that bought subscriptions to the site to track complaints, said Mr McAfee.

A veteran of the tech world, Mr McAfee pioneered anti-virus software via his own firm, which was sold to Intel in 2010.

He subsequently moved to Belize but fled the country in 2012 after he was named as a "person of interest" by police investigating the murder of his neighbour. Mr McAfee denies any involvement with the crime.

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UK satellite's view of Planet Earth

12 August 2014 Last updated at 07:15 By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

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Earth comes into view of the spinning satellite

Out of the darkness comes a stunning swathe of blue.

This video of Planet Earth was acquired by TechDemoSat-1 (TDS-1) just moments after being released by its launch rocket high above the Pacific.

It is thought to be the first such movie ever captured by a wholly British-built spacecraft.

TechDemoSat - funded part by government and part by manufacturer Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) - is a testbed for spacecraft systems.

The idea is that it proves technologies so that they can then be sold to other companies and space agencies around the world for their missions.

The low-cost camera that took this video incorporates all "off the shelf" components.

SSTL envisages it being used on future spacecraft to monitor any systems on a satellite that move, including deployable structures such as solar panels.

Global view

In this particular application, the lens is trained on the satellite's antenna pointing mechanism.

At the end of TechDemoSat's life, the 157kg platform will put out a large "drag sail" to help speed its return to Earth, ensuring it is not left littering the space environment.

Engineers hope to be able to see the edge of this sail structure in the field of view, also.

"In the future, we see such cameras becoming a standard on spacecraft so that you can see precisely what's happening," explained Luis Gomes, director of Earth Observation and Science at SSTL.

TDS-1 was launched on a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 8 July.

The video begins in darkness about 30 seconds after the platform has come off the rocket's Fregat upper-stage.

The satellite is tumbling at this stage. Controllers must work over the following hours to put TDS-1 in a stable, spinning configuration.

First into view is the Sun - a white flare with a black dot at the centre where the image is saturated by the intensity of the light. Then comes the Earth - clouds hovering above the ocean, south of French Polynesia.

Tech risk

Watch for the gold-coloured object that moves from left to right roughly two-thirds of the way through the sequence.

This is the Fregat stage at a distance of about 60m. Very quickly, it is followed by a white dot, which is very likely one of the other six satellites launched on the same flight.

Public funding for TDS-1 - about £7m - came mostly from the government's Technology Strategy Board. SSTL then matched the finance.

Ministers view satellites as one of the "eight great technologies" that can help re-balance the British economy.

The government is also putting money into another small satellite to be built by SSTL called NovaSAR.

This will be a radar spacecraft, which will be able to view the Earth through all weathers. Surrey hopes to expand its export business with this new platform.

Key elements of the radar instrument are being de-risked by being tested on TDS-1.

"The altimeter on TDS-1 uses the same 'front end' and part of the antenna that will be used on NovaSar. It uses the same amplifier technology, the same receiver technology. We'll exercise them to get the heritage and confidence that goes with that," said Mr Gomes.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

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Jezebel in 'rape' images complaint

12 August 2014 Last updated at 12:41 By Joe Miller Technology Reporter

The women's interest blog site Jezebel has said its parent company is not doing enough to prevent rogue users from posting violent pornography.

The publication, owned by New York-based Gawker Media, claims a "barrage" of offensive images are appearing in the comments below its stories, where they have to be manually removed.

Staff said they had repeatedly asked Gawker for the capability to block those posting the content.

Gawker acknowledged the problem.

Its editorial director, Joel Johnson, appeared to welcome the criticism, tweeting:

"Re: Jezebel. 1. They rule. 2. I've dropped the ball and they're right to call me out. 3. I don't have a solution yet but that's my problem."

Launched in 2003, Gawker Media runs a portfolio of successful web blogs, including the gadget site Gizmodo and sports publication Deadspin.

The firm started Jezebel - which has the tag line "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women. Without Airbrushing" - in 2007, and the site now has roughly 8.5 million monthly readers in the US.

'Untraceable' images

In a blog post entitled "We Have a Rape Gif Problem and Gawker Media Won't Do Anything About It", Jezebel staff complained that they were being made to deal with "excessively violent" pornography on a daily basis.

"For months, an individual or individuals has been using anonymous, untraceable burner accounts to post gifs [animated images] of violent pornography in the discussion section of stories on Jezebel," the editorial team said.

They problem, they claim, is down to the capacity of Kinja, the Gawker-owned software that powers the blog site.

Employee safety

Kinja allows administrators to block rogue accounts, but does not allow for the banning of individual IP, or internet protocol, addresses, which would mean a person using a particular computer could be stopped from commenting.

"Because IP addresses aren't recorded on burner accounts," Jezebel wrote, "literally nothing is stopping this individual or individuals from immediately signing up for another."

Gawker, meanwhile, wants to protect anonymous users so that they can confidently send in tip-offs, or leak documents, and is thus reluctant to monitor IP addresses.

Jezebel staff said they had been notifying Gawker managers of the problem for months to no avail, and said that its policy was an "example of employers failing to take the safety of its female employees seriously".

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Google builds cable under Pacific

12 August 2014 Last updated at 12:54

Google and five other large companies are teaming up to build a cable under the Pacific Ocean that will deliver incredibly fast internet speeds.

The cable, dubbed Faster, will connect the US with Japan and cost about $300m (£179m; 225m euros), the consortium said.

The trans-Pacific fibre cable would deliver speeds of 60 terabytes per second - enough to send more than 2,000 uncompressed HD films a second.

The cable will be operational by 2016.

Google is working with a host of Asian telecoms giants - China Mobile, China Telecom, Global Transit, KDDI, and SingTel.

'One of longest routes in world'

"Faster is one of a few hundred submarine telecommunications cables connecting various parts of the world," said Woohyong Choi, chairman of the consortium's executive committee. "These cables collectively form an important infrastructure that helps run global internet and communications.

"The Faster cable system has the largest design capacity ever built on the trans-Pacific route, which is one of the longest routes in the world."

The cable will connect Chikura and Shima in Japan to the major hubs on the west coast of the US - Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle.

Submarine cables are integral to the structure of how the world wide web works. In 2008, communications between Europe, the Middle East, and Asia were seriously disrupted after submarine cables were severed near the Alexandria cable station in Egypt. Sixty-five percent of net traffic to India was down at the time.

And KDDI, Japan's second-largest telecoms operator, had to do extensive work to repair undersea cables damaged in the massive 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Google already offers high-speed internet access directly in the US through its Fiber service, with speeds of 1Gbps in cities like Austin, Texas, and Kansas City, Kansas.

But the speeds from the new Faster cable far surpass anything consumers can access in most of the US and Europe, though internet speeds are generally much faster in Asia - South Korea wants to see citizens equipped with 1Gbps connections by 2017, for example.

The fastest widely-available speed of broadband in the UK is 152mbps. There are 1,000 megabits in one gigabit - and 1,000 gigabits in one terabit - of data transmitted.

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Skylanders game comes to tablets

12 August 2014 Last updated at 13:02 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Activision has announced that for the first time it is releasing one of the main games in its Skylanders series for tablets as well as consoles.

The tablet app is free, but must be paired with a new version of the publisher's add-on Traptanium Portal base to access the whole game.

As with other titles in the series, extra content and powers are unlocked by placing Skylanders toys on the base.

The US publisher pioneered the "toys-to-life" genre in 2011.

Since then, the franchise's games and figurines have generated more than $2bn (£1.2bn) worth of sales.

But the company is now facing growing competition from Disney's Infinity game, which is about to release Marvel playsets featuring characters that appeared in its Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy movies.

Lego and Nintendo have also announced plans to release their own "smart toys", which will interact with their respective video game franchises.

Activision said the iPad, Android and Kindle Fire versions of Skylanders Trap Team would offer the same contents and level of graphics found on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game when they are all released in October.

"This looks like a really smart move, both in terms of strengthening the Skylanders brand against rivals and also for the way it targets the young market that is predominantly gaming on tablet devices," commented Guy Cocker, a video games writer for Wired and T3 magazines.

"It's good that existing toys work with the tablets, but having to buy another portal is asking quite a lot of parents who've probably already bought other versions.

"Skylanders is a great game, but I worry about how much it costs parents over time."

Games controller

Skylanders figurines feature radio-frequency identification chips in their stands, which allow them to interact with the portal, which acts as a RFID reader/writer.

In addition to unlocking in-game content, the figurines can also be used to store data. This allows players to save progress, take the toy to a friend's home, and then continue playing using a separate device.

The tablet version of the portal connects to the touchscreen computers via Bluetooth, unlike the console versions that use a USB cable or special dongle.

The new base also includes a detachable games pad designed for the size of a child's hands to allow them precision control.

But the title can also be played using touch controls that appear on the tablets' screens when the game pad is turned off.

The portal will be sold as part of a starter pack costing £65 that also includes two Skylanders toys and two "traps", which can be used to capture in-game enemies that can subsequently be played with.

A further two characters are built into the app, so that it can be used even when not connected to the base.

However, parents are likely to come under pressure to buy more figurines to open up extra areas in the game and add powers.

Skylanders Trap Team introduces more than 50 new playable characters bringing the total to more than 225, each costing £9 or more.

Console alternative

The toys have proved to be a valuable commodity to Activision.

The California-based company announced in February that it had sold 175 million figures.

Earlier this month, it boasted that its Swap Force line-up of Skylanders characters were outselling Hasbro's Transformers and Star Wars toys as well as all other ranges of action figures in North America.

Extending the series to tablets offers the firm the opportunity to boost sales further.

"We know we have a huge audience of kids that are gaming almost exclusively on tablets," Paul Reiche, president and co-founder of Toys for Bob - the studio that developed the game - told the BBC.

"I feel like this is a legitimate audience for us to address. We really wanted to make sure that we could invest and give a complete 'triple-A' [big budget] choice that is one-to-one with our consoles."

This is not, however, the first Skylanders game for mobile devices.

Activision has released three prior titles that allowed players to unlock content by typing in a code included in the toys' packaging, paying in-app fees or using an earlier Bluetooth portal for iOS devices that Activision says is incompatible with the forthcoming release.

However, these games were more shallow than the console releases and were marketed as spin-offs.

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WATCH: Nintendo showed off its forthcoming amiibo toys in June

One industry watcher noted that this was the first time players would not need a console to play one of the series' core titles.

"It might be considerably more expensive than a normal tablet game - with the starter pack price - but it could be seen as a bargain by parents who now don't have to buy a new games console for their kid," said Rik Henderson, senior editor at the tech reviews site Pocket-lint.

"It's portable too, so could keep younger kids entertained on holidays. And because [most tablets have] HDMI or screen mirroring technologies, they can also play the game on a big screen anyway."

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Xbox gets Tomb Raider as exclusive

12 August 2014 Last updated at 15:23 By Leo Kelion Technology desk editor

Microsoft has announced that the next flagship game in its Tomb Raider series is to be an Xbox "exclusive".

The previous title had also been released for Sony's PlayStation platform in addition to a version for PCs and Macs.

The title's developer, Crystal Dynamics, said it believed the tie-up would help it advance the action-adventure game's brand.

But the studio acknowledged some people would have "concerns".

The original Tomb Raider game was closely associated with the original PlayStation, which it helped make a success.

One industry watcher described the news as a "decent coup" for Microsoft.

"If you look at the third-party titles that come to market, Tomb Raider is up there as one of the most anticipated third-person action titles," said Piers Harding-Rolls, head of games at the consultancy IHS.

The announcement was made during the Xbox press conference at the Gamescom trade fair in Cologne, Germany.

"We're incredibly excited to have Rise of the Tomb Raider come to our platform in 2015," said Microsoft corporate vice-president Phil Harrison at the event.

"It's a franchise I've admired for over 18 years, and I can't wait for Xbox One gamers to play the game next year."

A spokesman for Square Enix, Crystal Dynamic's owner, was unable to say whether the exclusivity deal had an expiration date.

Weaker sales

Although Microsoft had shown a teaser trailer of the title during its E3 expo press conference in June, there had been no indication that it had secured the title as an exclusive until now.

The last game - known simply as Tomb Raider - had rebooted the series by taking its lead character Lara Croft back to her first treasure hunting adventure, and had been well reviewed.

The new game may help Microsoft tempt gamers to buy its system rather than Sony's.

Financial reports from the two firms in July indicated that the PS4 and PS3 were outselling the Xbox One and Xbox 360 by a factor of three to one.

The two companies have not provided breakout figures for the latest consoles for some time, but figures from the research firm IDC indicate the PS4 has remained the stronger seller in North America despite Microsoft unbundling its Kinect sensor from the Xbox One to match Sony's price tag.

Mr Harding-Rolls said the Tomb Raider deal should act as a counterbalance to Sony's forthcoming in-house exclusive, Unchartered 4: A Thief's End.

"They have similar dynamics, and are both third-person adventure-style action titles," he commented.

"Unchartered is probably the most anticipated game out of Sony's exclusive, so I think Tomb Raider is a good defensive play."

Gamer backlash

Darrell Gallagher, head of studios at Crystal Dynamics, said he thought the move was the "very best thing" possible for his title.

"Today's announcement with Microsoft is one step to help us put Tomb Raider on top of action adventure gaming," he wrote.

"Our friends at Microsoft have always seen huge potential in Tomb Raider and have believed in our vision since our first unveil with them on their stage at E3 2011.

"We know they will get behind this game more than any support we have had from them in the past - we believe this will be a step to really forging the Tomb Raider brand as one of the biggest in gaming, with the help, belief and backing of a major partner like Microsoft."

He added that the deal would not prevent a franchise spin-off coming to other platforms.

Lara Croft and The Temple of Osiris - a dungeon-crawling title with top-down views of its gameplay - will still be published for PlayStation and PCs in addition to Xbox consoles when it is released in December.

Even so, there is evidence of a backlash against the decision.

"I played every Tomb Raider since Tomb Raider 2 on PC. This announcement doesn't mean I'll be playing it on Xbox One. It means I just won't be playing it all," posted a user named John in one of the comments below the firm's blog.

And on Twitter Colin Jones tweeted: "I have just lost every bit of respect & love I had for Square Enix, a game like Rise of the Tomb Raider should not be an exclusive!!!", while Jason Schreier added: "Microsoft literally paid Square Enix to deny their game to people."

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Vodafone 'worst for rural calls'

12 August 2014 Last updated at 17:13

Vodafone has the worst quality of calls for mobile phone customers in rural areas, according to research by Ofcom.

The regulator looked at data from EE, O2, Three, and Vodafone on the performance of their networks.

EE had the best service across the whole of the UK, with O2 leading in cities.

Ofcom said that research showed the consumers in urban areas were happier with their mobile phone service than those in rural areas.

Some 78% of people in urban areas were satisfied with their mobile network, compared with 67% in rural parts of the UK and 70% in remote areas, Ofcom said.

The research measured the quality of calls in areas with coverage, looking at the numbers that failed to connect or unexpectedly cut out.

Six months of data

Ofcom used data from RootMetrics, a company that measures network performance on mobile handsets, which showed the proportion of UK mobile phone calls connected successfully during the second half of 2013.

It said that overall:

• 97% of all calls on the EE network were successfully connected
• 95.3% on O2,
• 94.5% on Three,
• and 92.6% on Vodafone.

Continue reading the main story

We should all be able to get mobile reception, whether we're in the heart of the city or out in the sticks"

End Quote Ernest Doku uSwitch

In terms of rural calls:

• 93.7% on the EE network were successfully completed
• 87.4% on O2,
• 86% on Three,
• and only 79.9% on Vodafone.

"Regular independent testing of our network shows that we're the market leader for call set-up," Vodafone said. It also said that it recently launched a scheme called Rural Open Sure Signal to "extend coverage in hard-to-reach rural locations".

Ofcom said that all four networks have agreed to work with it to develop a common methodology for measuring the rates of successful mobile phone calls.

Dropped calls hit 20%

EE said: "It's great to see our ongoing investment in phone calls reflected in Ofcom's report, confirming that we continue to provide the best call experience across the UK, particularly in rural areas.

"We're investing hundreds of millions each year in expanding the reach of our network so that more people can make phone calls in more places," it added.

Three said that the data looks at "one measure of network performance but YouGov's surveys of iPhone, smartphone, tablet and mobile broadband users consistently suggest our customers are the most satisfied across a number of measures".

And O2 said: ""We are pleased to see that we are the best network in urban areas across England and the UK, where the majority of our customers are."

Ofcom also said that the majority of people it surveyed never or hardly ever had a blocked call or dropped calls. "However, a fifth of people said they experienced blocked calls and dropped calls at least once a week, and this increases in rural areas," it said.

"In this day and age, we should all be able to get mobile reception, whether we're in the heart of the city or out in the sticks," said Ernest Doku, of consumer tariffs comparison site uSwitch.

"While it's good to see that the majority living in cities are satisfied with their networks, this doesn't help me if I'm in a field, in rural Wales, with a broken leg and unable to call for help."

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