Tenby mobile signal woes drive away customers and disrupt daily life

Tenby’s mobile network has become so unreliable that business owners describe the town as a dead zone, with poor signal now hitting bookings, card payments and even basic contact with customers.

The damage is not abstract. Residents have reported missing hospital appointments and losing calls from a doctor and the Ambulance Transport Service. A local plasterer said he had missed bookings because clients could not get through, while a shop owner said it was embarrassing to explain that card payments could not be processed when the network failed. One resident said the signal was worse than the 1990s.

The complaints have been building for at least a year. County Councillor Michael Williams first raised the issue with Pembrokeshire County Council’s trading standards department in November 2024, and in April 2025 he said mobile providers were blaming visitor numbers for the congestion. That explanation, he argued, did not match what people were being charged. The problem has been especially acute in a tourism economy that depends on reliable contact, from hotel bookings to day-tripper spending.

Independent testing has given the criticism hard numbers. In September 2025, Which? named SA70 in Tenby the worst postcode in the UK for mobile network quality. Users there got a good connection only 54.3% of the time overall. Three customers fared worst, with a good connection just 38% of the time, while EE and O2 performed better at 71% and 63%.

The issue has now moved firmly into the political arena. In April 2026, newly elected Mid and South Pembrokeshire MP Henry Tufnell wrote to BT Group demanding urgent answers before the summer season, saying residents, businesses and tourists were being failed. He asked for an update on the proposed EE mobile base station at Petals Plant Nursery, Strawberry Lane, Penally, and said constituents had told him the mast at Slippery Back Lane had been removed and not yet replaced, leaving the Tenby area with very limited mobile phone signal.

The planned scheme would replace an existing 13-metre mast with a 20-metre 4G telecommunications mast for EE Ltd and Hutchison 3G UK Ltd, through Cellnex UK and Pegasus Planning Group. Meanwhile, a public appeal for evidence run through Tenby Chamber of Trade & Tourism had drawn more than 500 comments by April 28, 2026, with complaints stretching from the town centre, High Street and harbour to North Beach, South Beach, the Esplanade, The Green, Frog Street, the multi-storey car park, Sainsbury’s car park, Kiln Park, Penally, New Hedges, Lydstep, Manorbier and Saundersfoot.

Ofcom’s own tools show why the experience can vary so sharply by network. The regulator launched its Map Your Mobile checker on June 26, 2025, published Connected Nations 2025 on November 19, 2025, and updated its mobile signal-strength drive-testing data on March 6, 2026. In Tenby, the gap between advertised coverage and real-world service has become a question of infrastructure, commerce and public safety.