Studies have shown that phone signals on trains are not sufficient in most cases.

According to investigations, telephone reception in trains is not good enough for most time

Most of the time the phone signal in trains in the UK is not strong enough to scroll on social media or stream videos, the media authority said.

According to Ofcom, Vodafone met its “good performance” standards only in 17% of cases. EE was the network with the best performance, but met these standards only in 42% of cases.

Mobile UK, which represents the major telephone providers, said that there are ‘unique structural and capacity-related challenges’ to maintain a good train signal.

Ofcom said that mobile networks and local authorities would have to “be stronger” to provide more reliable services throughout the country.

It turned out that in the last five years some local authorities had rejected more than nine out of ten requests for new or modernised infrastructure.

Mobile UK, which represents EE, Virgin Media O2 and VodafoneThree, urged the government to “act now” and plan reforms and investments.

It states that taxpayers should finance a part of the infrastructure needed for the hazardous sites, “as commercial introduction alone cannot close the gap in the rail network”.

Ofcom’s threshold for a “good performance” was far below the average 4G speeds – but in most cases they still did not reach the mobile networks.

Three met the standards in 21% of cases and O2 met them in 20% of cases.

Ofcom said that “for too many people entering the network can mean going from the network”.

The main problems are the weak signal of the telephone towers around the rail lines and the fact that some car types did not allow the signal passage, it said.

There were tests of telephone signal quality on 24 routes in England, Scotland and Wales.

‘Good signal" was measured a download speed of five megabits per second, an upload speed of 1.5 megabits per second and a reaction time of 50 milliseconds.

It was said that this was the minimum required to act on video calls, scroll on social media or stream videos, but telephone networks did not achieve this in most cases.

Wi-Fi in trains worked well only in 1% of cases, where railway companies were criticized because they used outdated technology and threatened the Internet speed too much.

The Ministry of Transport (DfT) plans to spend £57 million on the project. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander will officially announce the plans in summer.

Mobile UK said it had to “reconcile the need for large investments with the crucial role of Ofcom in maintaining low cost for consumers”.

The Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology was contacted with the request for a comment.