Get Us Connected campaign: Poor mobile signal costs businesses dearly
A Shropshire businessman has called on the bosses of the UK's major mobile phone companies to come to Shropshire and explain their networks' poor performance in the county.
Chris Pallett, director of Bespoke Computing in Telford, made the call while throwing his weight behind the Shropshire Star's Get Us Connected campaign, which is demanding an improvement to mobile reception in the county.
He said that county businesses are losing out on tens of thousands of pounds of lost business as a consequence of the networks' service, and backed the campaign, which is also supported by Keith Barrow, the leader of Shropshire Council.
"Keith Barrow is spot on when he says it is not just EE which is causing the problem," said Mr Pallett.
"I have clients county-wide and beyond who are facing this daily nightmare of trying to take calls from important clients with limited signal or missing crucial calls which then forces the client to leave an answerphone message when in fact the company was waiting for that call.
"The rural Shropshire clients are the most affected and deserve so much more. Those business owners who work so hard to make their business a success are often the lifeblood of the rural, local economy and those people need to be able to continue their day to day business.
"Perhaps we could even invite some of the leading figures from these businesses to Shropshire to ask them why they think it is acceptable to treat us as they are doing."
The IT expert based on Stafford Park said he understood Connecting Shropshire was rolling out broadband to rural areas to help ease the situation but that alone was not enough and was too slow a process.
"We need action now," he said. "We need to put pressure on all of the network providers. EE has certainly faced the most criticism but I have a construction client in Shrewsbury on Vodafone and every day he deals with extremely limited or even non-existent signal.
"Clients say they know they lose out on business and spend so much time carrying out tasks such as replying to emails with poor broadband signal that their turnover is affected."
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Shropshire Star launches petition over county's mobile phone signal crisis
