Communication in 2026

Can anyone believe this? Turns out that a communication mast for mobile phones was built near to a high-pressure gas main. It had been there for decades, quite literally. The providers decide, or are forced, to remove it without notice leaving some thousands of people without signal. This is 2026 – we can’t live without signal. The providers put in a planning application to replace the ugly old mast with a sleek new one but the local planning authority refuse it, just like that, double quick.

Do you think something about this is really odd? Do you think they could have planned the replacement over the last twenty-five years so that the new mast received its permissions and was working before the old one was decommissioned?

Now let me ask you, where do you think this happened? Some potentate state? Some developing state? Some bureaucratically entangled state utterly crippled by corruption? None of the above: It is the City of Colchester in the UK, about 60 miles from London.