Network operators might like to focus a little more on providing decent mobile-phone reception instead of pushing games and sponsoring the events

I've just come back from a weekend in Hertfordshire. That's Hertfordshire, one of the Home Counties, within earshot of the M1 and a stone's throw from London, not Hertfordshire in some remote mountainous area of the Adirondacks. My mobile phone didn't work there, nor do the mobiles of the two friends I was visiting.

Doesn't it seem ludicrous that a supposedly mature market—mobile networks—can't deliver 100 per cent network coverage in the UK? Isn't that what people want from their mobile phones—to be able to make and receive calls, and sometimes texts, on the move?

It matters not a jot to me that O2 has "partnered" with the people at the Dome, which has been rebranded as the O2 Arena, in order to provide me with one of the "better and unique experiences" that marketing director Sally Cowdry claims are important to O2 customers. But being able to call friends, family and business contacts when I'm not at home or at work is pretty important.

Mobile networks seem to be suffering from an identity crisis, not sure what the converged digital future is going to look like, nor of the role they should be playing within it. Like the main political parties, they have converged on the middle ground so you can scarcely stick a pin between them. They target broadly the same audience—16-35-year-olds—using similar adverts featuring similar people and touting the same range of services—communications, entertainment and information—that no-one really seems to want.

The homogeneity of their ads and offerings is not entirely their fault. The hand-set manufacturers have all the fun, coming up with ever-sexier products that growing numbers of today's image-obsessed consumers can't do without. They may only use 15 per cent of the capacity of their phones, but they don't half look cool. But it's pretty difficult to make vibrating air seem sexy.

Pressure from the City is partly to blame. The "teenage scribblers" of the analyst community have become teenage technophiles, urging the network operators to get a stake in every new technology—music or video downloading, for example—despite apparent lack of demand. And their obsession with the metric of the moment—whether it's acquisition, churn or average revenue per user—militates against differentiation.

But the operators do themselves no favours either. In an industry that is crying out for a fresh perspective, marketing and agency staff circulate incestuously around each other's businesses.

The problem is, unless one of the mobile network operators can haul itself out of the mire of increasing commoditisation, someone else—a Skype, a Google or an Apple—will come in and do it for them. After all, Apple—a computer and MP3 manufacturer—has already rewritten the rules of hand-sets.

The runaway success of the iPhone in the US looks set to be replicated here, judging by sales since its launch last month, and there is no reason why Apple couldn't do the same with networks.

Excitement and innovation in a market tend to be driven by new players, but, significantly, there is a precedent in financial services, another largely commoditised market, where it was offshoots of existing companies that shook things up—Prudential laid Egg and HSBC spawned First Direct.

Apple had a vision of the future that elevated it above being just another computer manufacturer. That vision was about a number of digital devices that could lock into a digital hub—the computer—and the vision evolved into making all those devices mobile.

It created a very clear identity and engaging personality around that vision, an identity and personality that run through the company like words in a stick of rock and are manifested in every single contact with the customer.
It's surely not beyond the wit or pockets of a mobile network operator to do something similar. On the other hand (and I write this refreshed from a few blissful "always off" days), perhaps we should exploit the limitations of mobile phones and ensure we take our breaks in transmission black spots, so that we can get some peace.

Jane Simms is the former editor of Financial Director and Marketing Business.