Calling home

When I was born we were fighting the Nazis with Mosquito combat aeroplanes made from a plywood airframe covered in doped fabric.

Since then we have launched Earth satellites, sent men to the moon and returned them safely, sent the Voyager probe out of the solar system, landed a mobile laboratory on Mars and most recently we have successfully put a space craft in orbit around the 2 mile wide Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, after a journey lasting 10 years, and then landed Philae onto its surface to make measurements and to send back photographs. This we have done at a distance of 511 million kilometres, so far that it takes a radio message, moving at the speed of light, some 30 minutes to reach Earth. My God, are we good or are we good?

How come then, that where I live, just 12 miles from Scotland's third largest city, I have to go into the garden and climb up a tree to get a signal on my mobile 'phone?