Ben Cope

Communicator and writer. Director of @bufferingbrit. Senior Associate at @eternapartners. Palace fan 🦅

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

Britain’s phone signal is a national disgrace. @Jack_Nostalgic and I are launching a campaign to fix it. Watch the video, check out our website, and get involved. There’s lots more to come.

[Buffering Britain @BufferingBrit]

We're Buffering Britain, and we're going to fix the country's phone signal. Join us.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

Lots of replies questioned whether German internet speeds on trains really was any better than the U.K. Here’s the evidence. Embarrassing for us. The government’s new initiative is welcome but there’s so much ground to make up.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

I’m taking a train from Frankfurt to Leipzig. Germany’s phone signal is so much better than ours. People are streaming videos, sending emails, and making calls. I took a train from Manchester to London at the weekend and I had to give up the work I’d planned because the signal was so poor. It doesn’t have to be this way.

[Crystal Palace F.C. @CPFC]

Crystal Palace, Champions of Europe ❤️💙

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@robintel 😭

[Buffering Britain @BufferingBrit]

Frustrated by your phone constantly buffering at the worst moments?

New research commissioned by Buffering Britain in collaboration with the Centre for British Progress shows mobile network congestion is costing UK consumers between £490 million and £785 million every year in lost value.

In London, where we have the most detailed time-of-day speed data, the hit is £150–260 million annually – and it could climb closer to £370 million when you look at the raw evening peak numbers.

They combined willingness-to-pay figures from a major European study with real Opensignal crowdsourced data. Peak times in London see speeds drop to around 65% of uncongested levels, sometimes as low as 46% in the worst hours and that lost performance adds up.

So what’s the culprit here? As with so much else in Britain, planning rules are slowing the buildout new masts and small cells on street furniture.

We kept the numbers conservative, adjusting for common survey biases and focusing just on speed for now. Latency spikes during congestion would push likely the total even higher.

Buffering Britain is campaigning to cut through the red tape and get Britain properly connected.

If poor signal is driving you mad, come join the fight. Poor connectivity is a choice – we can make a different one.

Read the full working note here: https://t.co/qQG61P3paS

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@petitecyclist @BufferingBrit Good to know, thanks!

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

I’m taking a train from Frankfurt to Leipzig. Germany’s phone signal is so much better than ours. People are streaming videos, sending emails, and making calls. I took a train from Manchester to London at the weekend and I had to give up the work I’d planned because the signal was so poor. It doesn’t have to be this way.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@petitecyclist Interesting… perhaps @BufferingBrit needs to go pan-European!

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@petitecyclist Yeah! Have you had a worse experience?

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@predict_addict @BufferingBrit Embarrassing

[Jack Rowlett @Jack_Nostalgic]

New research shows that poor phone signal is costing us up to £785mn a year in lost consumer welfare.

If you, your company, or organisation are fed up with the buffering then we want to hear from you as we devise the fix for this most frustrating problem.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

£785 million a year. That’s the direct cost of poor phone signal in the U.K. £260 million in London alone. This is holding the country back. We need to fix it.

[Buffering Britain @BufferingBrit]

New modelling by @BritishProgress for Buffering Britain puts the direct consumer welfare cost of Britain's mobile network congestion at £490–785 million a year. Here's how they got there. 🧵

[Alexander @alexanderrX_]

sometimes i cannot take the uk seriously.

america has reusable rockets going to space. thailand has full 5g in the jungle. qatar airways has starlink at 30,000 feet.

meanwhile i pay £140 for a return train ticket and get 1.19 mbps download and 0 upload.

this country is not serious.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@NielsHoven The tyranny of merit

[Buffering Britain @BufferingBrit]

Yesterday, @BenHCope wrote for the Spectator about how his own experience of poor phone signal is unfortunately all too common. Some key points:
- Britain's phone signal ranks 59th in the world, behind countries like Kazakhstan
- It costs the UK up to £7bn a year
- A planning system that blocks rather than builds is the key culprit
- Buffering Britain is going to fix it.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@Joe___Allen 💯

[Buffering Britain @BufferingBrit]

We spoke to GB News about why Britain's mobile signal is so bad, what it's costing us, and what can be done to fix it.

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@ChrisSamson18 The amount of times we lost signal during the filming day was cruelly ironic!

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@DanielJoseph Ha!

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@maxwell_marlow @BufferingBrit Thanks, Maxwell. Yes, really enjoyed your report. Let’s talk

[Ben Cope @BenHCope]

@Fremond_ Thank you!