Train today, gone tomorrow

The title really doesn't make sense but I'm tired and I just liked how it sounded.  Anyway, just a quickie - as, like I said I'm tired - but this bugged me earlier.

I was on four different trains today shuttling between Hampshire and Surrey and I had very unreliable reception on my mobile.  I knew this would be the case as it always is when I get the train in the UK.  The thing is you don't even need to be going through tunnels or deep valleys for the signal to just drop out.

I don't think this is just down to my operator (if you've read my blog enough you'll know that it's 3!) as everyone else seems to have the same problem.  I don't think it's to do with the train carriages (even though they would appear to behave like Faraday Cages) as there's times I get a full bars.

What prevents stable reception on mainline railways in the London commuter belt?  I can go ten miles out into the countryside and get rock solid 3G reception miles away from any large village/small town and yet not on the train to and from London?!?

And don't even get me started on my phone's inability to run three fairly simple things at the same time today.  Being able to listen to music, browse the web and have push email at the same time should be a doodle for my Nokia N73.  Today it simply couldn't do it!  It'll be interesting to know how this Skypephone multitasks as running Skype on my Nokia is just asking for trouble and simple wouldn't have been possible today.