Tees Valley Combined Authority
Coverage Mapping 2025
Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) contracted Inakalum to map mobile coverage and performance across all five council areas of the region. The survey method: place battery-powered NetworkUX kits in residual waste collection trucks and let them gather data as they run their normal daily routes. The kits are portable, so they swap between trucks each day to target whichever routes cover the most new ground. Every route was covered three times during the survey. Over ten million datapoints were captured between February and August 2025 — and in October, the data went live as a public-facing Coverage Checker that any resident can query by postcode.
- Region
- Tees Valley, North East England
- Councils surveyed
- 5 (Darlington · Hartlepool · Middlesbrough · Redcar & Cleveland · Stockton-on-Tees)
- Networks measured
- Vodafone · EE · O2 · Three
- Survey window
- 04 Feb – 01 Aug 2025
- Datapoints captured
- 10,000,000+
The cheapest, biggest survey: your own bin wagons.
Every council in the region already runs a fleet of refuse collection trucks that systematically drive every residential street, every week, for free. Battery-powered, portable NetworkUX kits placed in those trucks — switched on in the cab, monitored remotely, swapped between vehicles each day to target whichever routes cover the most new ground — turn them into ongoing mobile-coverage survey vehicles. Each council’s waste routes were covered three times during the engagement, producing a dataset no foot or vehicle survey could match in scale or coverage.
Existing operations, no extra fieldwork
Bin wagons run their normal routes every week. Inakalum’s operatives place the kits in the cabs at the depot; the council’s operations aren’t involved in the survey at all. The kit captures coverage and performance in the background while the fleet does its normal work.
Every street, three times over
Residential waste-collection routes systematically cover every street in a council area multiple times during a survey window. The result is a dataset with both breadth (every street) and confidence (multiple passes).
Inakalum runs the kit
The kits are battery-powered and portable. Inakalum handles delivery, daily charging, swapping them between vehicles to target specific routes, and remote monitoring. The council’s only ongoing involvement is the bin wagon doing its normal job.
One programme, five councils, one dataset
Same kit, same methodology, same data structure across Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar & Cleveland and Stockton-on-Tees. The Combined Authority gets a region-wide comparable baseline, and each council gets its own slice.
Region-wide, one council at a time.
Each council area was surveyed across all four UK networks, with results visualised at street level. Click through to any council’s public Coverage Checker view.
Darlington
Town centre and surrounding wards, with notable rural fringes on the western edge of the survey footprint.
Open on the Coverage Checker
Hartlepool
Coastal town with seafront, dense town centre and a substantial industrial footprint south of the marina.
Open on the Coverage Checker
Middlesbrough
The largest urban centre in the region — town-centre density, university quarter, and the busy A66 / A19 corridor.
Open on the Coverage Checker
Redcar & Cleveland
Mixed urban and rural footprint stretching from Redcar town along the coast to the East Cleveland villages and farms.
Open on the Coverage Checker
Stockton-on-Tees
The most populous of the five boroughs — Stockton, Billingham, Thornaby and Ingleby Barwick, plus rural wards to the south.
Open on the Coverage CheckerWhat “coverage” and “performance” actually look like.
A worked example using Middlesbrough, the largest urban area in the region. The left map shows signal strength (in dBm) for each network. The right map shows actual data performance (download speed in Mbps) on the same streets, in the same survey. Signal coverage in Middlesbrough is excellent on all four networks. Data performance varies markedly.
The two maps are the same survey, the same streets, the same vehicle, the same time period — only the metric being plotted is different. That paired view is the foundational output of every NetworkUX engagement, and it’s why “signal isn’t service” shows up on the map as well as in the numbers.
A Coverage Checker any resident can use.
In October 2025, Inakalum launched a public Mobile Coverage Checker for the Tees Valley region. A resident enters a postcode or street name. The tool returns signal-strength and data-performance maps for all four UK networks at street level — with recommended networks for common use cases (browsing, social media, video calls, live streaming, 4K video). It launched with over 3,000 unique visitors in the first two days, helped by an explainer video from Mayor Ben Houchen. It’s the most granular coverage checker in the UK — 10-metre hexagons (vs 50–100 m for Ofcom and the operators), all four networks side-by-side, real measurements only.
The Mayor and council leaders on the programme.
“Ever wondered why your apps won’t load despite full bars on your phone? That’s exactly what our new Mobile Performance Map is here to solve. It’s already highlighting where coverage is strong — and where it needs to improve — so we can work with providers to fill the gaps and make sure people get the service they pay for.”
Tees Valley Mayor
“We’re using our bin wagons to sort more than just our rubbish — we’re sorting rubbish signal out, too. This smart solution means we’ll finally get real answers about where coverage works and where it doesn’t. No more guesswork — this will give us hard evidence of problems people who have poor signal know only too well and arm us to go to providers and government to get it sorted.”
Leader, Darlington Borough Council
“Good mobile coverage is a necessity for work, travel, and daily life, but many people still struggle with poor signal and slow data speeds. We’re happy to support this TVCA initiative to assess mobile coverage down to street address level that will help identify areas that need better coverage, across our Borough and the wider region.”
Leader, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
Six months, ten million datapoints.
The programme at a glance — what was measured, where, and to what effect.
Three outputs from one survey programme.
The same dataset, packaged three ways for three different uses: a public-facing tool, an internal analytical workspace, and a portable raw dataset for the council’s GIS team.
1. Public Coverage Checker
The resident-facing web tool at coveragecheckermap.com/teesvalley. Address-level lookups, four-network panels, recommended-network guidance per use case. Free to use, no sign-in.
2. RAG Polygon analytical tool
An internal NetworkUX workspace for TVCA’s Digital Connectivity team. Beyond the public tool: time-of-day filtering, polygon-level confidence levels (datapoint counts), and arbitrary area drawing for specific investigations.
3. Raw GIS data exports
All 10+ million datapoints delivered to TVCA in standard GIS format. Sits inside the council’s own spatial data stack so it can be cross-referenced with planning, infrastructure and digital-inclusion datasets.
Four takeaways for councils, combined authorities and place leaders.
Your existing operations are the survey vehicle
Bin wagons drive every residential street already. The cost of converting that movement into a coverage dataset is a NetworkUX kit and the logistics of delivery, collection and charging — not a dedicated survey programme. The same model applies to parking enforcement vehicles, school inspector cars, social-care transport and council fleet generally.
£32,490 of UKSPF buys a regional baseline
The Tees Valley programme is funded through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund at a price point that’s within reach of a single council’s discretionary budget — let alone a Combined Authority’s. The deliverable is the kind of evidence base that supports operator engagement, digital inclusion strategy and infrastructure planning for years.
Public-facing data democratises the conversation
The Coverage Checker had 3,000+ unique visitors in its first two days. Once the data is public, residents and businesses can verify their own postcode and bring evidence into the conversation with operators. The council becomes the steward of the truth rather than the gatekeeper.
One dataset, multiple consumers
The same 10 million datapoints support a public tool, an internal analytical workspace, and exports into the council’s GIS stack. The investment compounds: residents get a checker, the connectivity team gets analytics, planners get spatial data, and operators get a structured, defensible evidence base when the conversation about gaps begins.
The model travels. The methodology stays the same.
If you run a council fleet, manage a borough’s digital connectivity, or convene a BID footprint, the Tees Valley approach can be adapted to your geography and your operations.