Visitors to the famous white cliffs of Dover
are getting a nasty surprise when they want to use their mobile phones – they are picking up a French signal at higher
charges.
Residents and tourists in the seaside village
of St Margaret-at-Cliffe and St Margaret's bay at the foot of the Kent cliffs –
just 18 miles from France – regularly get a "Welcome to France"
message and the extra costs, including data roaming charges for smartphone users,
from companies such as Orange F and SFR.
Landlord of the Coastguard pub and restaurant
on the beach Nigel Wydymus, 53, said: "We are a little telecommunications
enclave of France here.
"It did not cause a huge amount of
trouble for a few years because you got a message saying 'Welcome to France',
but since smartphones have come in it's more of a problem.
"Obviously people strolling along the
beach in England do not expect to be on a French network and so, unlike when
they get off the plane in Spain or elsewhere, they haven't switched off their
data roaming and it causes some extra bills.
"In the village the French signal is
patchy depending on the atmospherics and the weather, but here on the beach the
French signal is constant because we are at the foot of the cliffs and the UK
signal is blocked out."
Costs for making a call on the French network
can be up to four times the cost of using a domestic one with a cost of up to
28p to make a call and nearly 8p to receive one and nearly 9p to send a text.
The signal problem has upset locals who want
something to be done to stop the extra charges and inconvenience.
A spokesman for EE said: "We always
recommend our customers switch off roaming while they are in this little pocket
of an area to ensure that they are connecting to the correct network because we
cannot control the networks from the other side of the water."
The issue is believed to affect all UK networks.
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