Mobile reception – You’re losing it, surely?!

when-your-phone-has-no-signalReading that UK homeowners are more likely to relocate due to poor mobile reception than for safety concerns, Xavier Toby wondered if mobile reception was all they were lacking…

How far would you go to remedy poor mobile reception?

You might move around…you might even move outside.

But would you pack up and move house?

A survey in the UK found that homeowners were more likely to move because of poor mobile reception, than antisocial behaviour or feeling unsafe.

The survey did not state “no mobile reception,” just “poor mobile reception.”

Meaning that these people are so obsessed with being connected, that this has become more important than an increased possibly of being abused or beaten up – results that I think are no doubt linked.

For example, what’s the point of having decent mobile coverage if your neighbours aren’t doing anything crazy for you to complain about on social media?

This survey also raises big questions about the intelligence of human beings in general.

While living in a share house in Brunswick, Victoria, I suffered from extremely poor mobile coverage. People couldn’t hear me, texts arrived hours after they were sent, and Facebook updated at the rate of a daily newspaper – once a day, and only with old news.

So what did I do? Instead of moving house I moved mobile providers, from Optus to Telstra, and my reception problems were solved. Issues around billing, connection and a customer service department that actually provided any service to customers all remained.

There were also more pressing problems in the share house itself. In particular to do with my girlfriend, who wished to resign that position, forcing me to move (less technology error, and more human error), leading to one thing I hated more than living close to a busy road or having a small garden, and that’s moving itself.

You estimate how many loads it should take, and then it always takes about three times as many.

You measure your furniture, and the spaces where it should fit, and it never does. Provided that you can ever put the furniture back together again.

Then whenever I move, or commit to helping someone else, I’m always hungover. Thus making a horrible task borderline unbearable.

Instead of surveying why people want to move, a far better question would have been, “Does any of this bother you more than moving itself?”

I’ve solved this issue by no longer having a home. That’s right, I travel around so much and dislike looking for a home then moving into it so much that I now refuse to do it.

It has led to other problems including friends and family who no longer answer my calls (and it’s not because of bad reception), crazy sub-letters with rules around everything from constant cleaning to oxygen consumption, and not ever being considered relationship material…maybe it’s time to invest in that caravan?

Back to the study of 2,027 adults in the UK, it also found that 72 percent were unhappy with where they were living. Imagine that? Being unhappy whenever you were home. That would suck. Another better survey question I believe would have been, “Are you ever happy?”

I’m guessing the answer would be no. Which would turn to blind anger if that person couldn’t even get onto social media to whinge about it due to poor mobile reception.

If a British homeowner whinges and nobody can hear them, are they even whinging at all?

Most importantly…does anyone care?

In case you’re interested, here’s the survey.

This article first appeared on The Big Smoke:

Catch the one-man comedy show “Xavier Toby – Mining My Own Business” at the Melbourne Fringe until Sep 26, based on stories from his debut non-fiction comedy memoir.