The frustration of poor mobile phone coverage is familiar to visitors to Britain's rural areas – but it can be a little more serious when you are a prime minister and need to keep on top of world affairs.
David Cameron has renewed his pledge to help rural communities in broadband "not-spots", having admitted that he has had to cut short his own coastal holidays owing to poor mobile phone signal coverage.
The prime minister said he had to return to London from Cornwall – a long-standing domestic holiday destination for the Camerons – in 2011 and 2013, as a lack of signal hampered his ability to keep updated on the fall of the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the Syrian conflict respectively.
In an interview on Sunday with the Western Morning News, Cameron said: "This is a really big issue for people all over the country – the 'not-spots'. It's not good enough to say here's the mobile coverage for the whole country. You have got to recognise a lot of people are making important calls while they are on the move. We do need to improve the coverage of the mobile phone signal."
Cameron said poor technology "affects prime ministers making important calls wherever they are, but it affects everybody".
He told the newspaper: "For rural communities, not being connected to super-fast broadband is a bit like not being connected to the road network: it's that bad. So much work is being done online that it really is a must-have. We've got to crack this."
Recalling the technological problems in Cornwall, Cameron, whose daughter Florence was born in the Duchy in 2010, said: "As I go down a hill into Polzeath [in north Cornwall] I know exactly which bit of the road I lose my signal. So it is a problem. I know where to go to get a signal, but it can be very frustrating."
However, Cameron went on to say that he was never happier than when he was in Cornwall.
"I love the seaside, I love the landscape, I like the people. There are lots of places that mean a lot to me. I've been going to north Cornwall man and boy. I went as a child. I love surfing at Polzeath. I love walking the coastal path. I love the pubs. I like the beer. There's nothing about it I don't like."
Ministers are discussing plans to negotiate with mobile phone operators to ask them to help increase coverage by sharing phone masts, which would allow for the introduction of national roaming in the UK. This would see phones switch from one operator to another when service is not available through the first provider, which is what happens when people travel abroad.
The move would help to solve the problem of partial "not-spots", areas where only some of the main networks are available, and would be good news for hundreds of thousands of people but mobile phone companies could resist the idea of sharing masts with rivals.
The government says it is investing up to £150m to improve mobile coverage in areas where there is currently no coverage from any of the network operators.
