If you want to discover the real north-south divide, just drive out of Scotland's major cities.

It's a different world, like going back in time, like science fiction. Suddenly, all the devices on which your life has come to depend no longer work.

You can't speak to anyone on the phone. You can't email or find out what's being said on Twitter. You are a lost soul adrift in the middle ages.

Yesterday we were told the Government is planning a nationwide crackdown on poor mobile coverage. The Prime Minister, we are told, has an aide who, while they drive around the country, checks when he enters a so called "not spot" where there is no phone signal.

Well, they don't need to bother in Scotland; just draw a circle around the cities and everywhere else is black. You think I exaggerate?

Before the referendum I was supposed to go on a Twitter excursion around Scotland as part of my Road to Referendum speaking tour. What a great idea that was.

It is impossible to tweet from 90 per cent of Scotland's landmass because, even where you can get wifi, it isn't powerful enough to load even a few comments on Twitter. And, of course, most places you can't do anything because there is no phone signal.

Now, I should have known this because I used to spend a lot of time in the Highlands going up hills. And as anyone who does so knows, you are in the bizarre situation when you reach a summit that the dead mobile in your pocket that you'd forgotten about suddenly comes to life.

I remember being on top of the Cobbler in the snow when my phone went mad with a whole string of calls and messages that I couldn't ignore; and, worse, needed replies. I had to sit there for three-quarters of an hour sending texts and emails and waiting for responses.

Climbers passing me thought I was completely nuts, or an extreme workaholic. But I knew that, as soon as I went down, I would be back in the black hole that is Scotland's mobile telephony and would be unable to contact anyone until I got to Glasgow. Actually, the third lay-by on Loch Lomond sometimes works.

I'm sure many people have had the same experiences: dashing back south, mobile on the dashboard, cursing the lack of bars; wandering around aimlessly in Assynt, phone aloft, hoping for some sign of life; trying to make sense of calls where every second word drops out; and staring at the spinning wheel waiting for a message to load that never comes.

And yes, I know it's not just in the north of Scotland that this is a problem. It's pretty dire in the south west also, and in the Borders, and in much of the Central Belt.

And before everyone descends on me on Twitter, I know that there are some pretty poor patches in Scotland's cities. During the referendum campaign, one of the many problems faced by Yes Scotland was that their mobile phones didn't work in their Hope Street headquarters.

But at least they could go out and get a signal. In huge areas of Scotland that simply isn't possible.

How do people manage to do business in this strange nether world that is extra-urban Scotland? Well, the answer is they don't.

I spoke to many people in the Highlands, and in the not so high lands of Scotland, who say that this is the single greatest obstacle to economic development.

There are great business opportunities in Scotland because of the increase in Highland populations. The great out-migration has largely been reversed in the last couple of decades.

But the progress is halted because of the inability of our electronic masters to include non-urban people in the new world of interconnectedness.

Actually, they should send telecommunications company EE's Kevin Bacon up to Argyll and see how many degrees of separation he finds up there. Watch his buffer-face as he tries to stream football matches in Perthshire. These adverts are a complete misrepresentation of our true state of connectedness. One-quarter of Scotland doesn't even have 2G, according to the Federation of Small Businesses.

How can you run any kind of business when there is no broadband? It is impossible, like trying to do without electricity.

Mobile phones and the internet are, or should be utilities, like water. You simply cannot participate in the modern world without access to them.

Now in the good old days there used to be publicly owned companies that managed things like posts and telecommunications and had a responsibility to ensure that everyone was connected.

Imagine if the old GPO had left most of Scotland without phone lines because they weren't profitable.

And no, I don't think we would necessarily want to nationalise mobile phone companies - though if anyone came up with a credible plan I would certainly give it a listen.

But it must surely be possible to introduce a regulatory regime that doesn't discriminate so grossly against people in less populated areas.

The Government is supposed to be setting up a scheme to get "national roaming" off the ground, meaning that if your phone doesn't work on your carrier, it will hook onto another, as is the case when you go across to the European mainland.

Theresa May was apparently against this in case it made it easier for criminals and terrorists to escape the law, though how getting a mobile phone signal in the Trossachs is going to help Islamic State or drug dealers is a mystery to me. But the problem with roaming here is that the signal strength is so poor it will still be an indifferent service. And it doesn't address the problems with broadband.

I simply don't understand why, when hooked into a wifi service in Stonehaven, I couldn't access Twitter. Or anything. And yet I was only a few miles south of Aberdeen, one of the wealthiest areas in the United Kingdom.

Needless to say this is the kind of thing that doesn't happen in Norway where, as I can confirm, you get a proper mobile signal everywhere there is a road. How do they do it? I haven't a clue; but it just isn't a problem.

I hate always going on about Nordic countries, so let's look at France, where they passed is a law in 2012 that everyone has to get broadband, and at a flat rate: the Alps, Pyrenees, Massive Central - anywhere.

The problem in the UK, of course, is that there is no money in extending proper mobile and broadband services to rural areas and, in our system, we don't impose on "the market".

And politicians don't get very bothered because there aren't a heap of votes involved. But this really is one of the great unnecessary problems of the 21st Century.

Maybe in future, instead of selling off 3G and 4G services to the highest bidder, as Gordon Brown did in 2000, they should just lease them out; and make it a condition of use that they give a proper service to everyone in the country.

Hello, hello. Is anyone listening?