The scale of the improvements needed to boost rural mobile and broadband have been underscored in a survey by agricultural purchasing group Anglian Farmers.

The EDP Top 100 firm surveyed 130 members based across the UK looking at success and failure rates of telephone calls, text messages and data connections between October 1 and November 7.

During that time, 36,109 call attempts were made, with an average call setup success rate of 99.13pc. An average of 0.95pc of calls during this period were dropped.

The EDP's Let's Get Connected campaign is calling on government and mobile phone companies to boost the signal and end the two-tier and patchy service facing those living outside the UK's main urban areas.

The latest Anglia Farmers data also showed that the worst affected site during the test period had 21 errors/failed calls, with 11 sites reporting more than 12 errors.

Clarke Willis, Anglia Farmers chief executive, said the findings highlighted the need for further improvements.

'The data from this survey shows that mobile phone signal can be very poor in some areas,' he said. 'This is a problem we have been aware of for some time and this data gives us a platform to work from to try push for improvements.

'For people to have whole days when they cannot connect a call or send a text message is a real issue and we are working hard to do all we can to improve the service for our members, and for all those who live and run businesses in rural areas for whom poor mobile phone signal and slow broadband cause problems.'