UPDATE UK Moots National Mobile Phone Network Sharing to Boost Coverage

The Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has confirmed that they’re discussing a proposal with Mobile Network Operators (e.g. Three UK, Vodafone, EE and O2) to boost mobile broadband (3G, 4G) and general mobile service reception by encouraging greater sharing of masts and a national roaming policy.

At present the Government-backed £150 million Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP) is already working to help build new mobile masts to cover those who live in areas of poor or non-existent service, which should benefit around 60,000 premises and also help to ensure that Mobile Broadband services become available to “at least” 98% of UK people by the end of 2015.

But the MIP will not solve all of the problems and, as most people already know, the figures for network coverage often do not reflect reality on the ground, where signal reception can frequently break or diminish to the point of being virtually unusable (note: this is not just a rural problem, it also happens in urban areas).

Even the Prime Minister, David Cameron, has admitted that he’s occasionally had to dart back to work from family holidays in Cornwall due to a lack of mobile reception. Mr Cameron said (here): “This is a really big issue for people all over the country – the ‘not-spots’. It’s not good enough to say here’s the mobile coverage for the whole country. You have got to recognise a lot of people are making important calls while they are on the move.”

As a result the government, which recognises that some operators can have better coverage in certain areas than others, are investigating whether or not they can force the big MNO’s to share their infrastructure (masts) and possibly introduce some form of national roaming agreement.

A DCMS Spokesman told the BBC:

“The government has made clear it wants to ensure the UK has world-class mobile phone coverage as part of our investment in infrastructure for the long-term economic plan.

We are investing up to £150m to improve mobile coverage in areas where there is currently no coverage from any of the Mobile Network Operators.

Of course we want to look at what more can be done in areas with poor coverage.”

Admittedly the primary mobile operators already have network sharing agreements in place (e.g. O2 + Vodafone and EE + Three UK), although these usually keep some separation and the Government appears to be looking at a much more extensive approach that’s unlikely to be universally welcomed by the operators (note: last year’s 4G auction also suffered significant delays over arguably far smaller issues).

In particular, if you’ve just spent hundreds of millions to give your network an edge in particular areas then what incentive is there for you share that with your rivals (reciprocal arrangements in specific areas perhaps)? Likewise operators might be discouraged from making future investments for fear that rivals would get a free ride. Meanwhile the EU are also working towards cutting roaming fees altogether (i.e. what you pay domestically would be the same while roaming around the EU), which could complicate matters.

Adrian Kennard, MD of Andrews & Arnold (AAISP), said:

“One of the things that concerns me is how it may affect the services A&A offer, as we now do SIMs, and from next month expect to have roaming SIMs as well. We are expecting that our cost prices for roaming and non roaming will be different, so I do have to wonder how the legislation will be drafted.

Our prices are simple, for calls on O2 in the UK is is 2p/minute for the mobile leg, and we expect roaming costs to be simple too, the same price for all EU roaming, but a higher price than 2p/min.

If we are actually forced to make roaming the same price as non roaming that means we will be forced to increase the cost of non roaming, which is crazy. Hopefully the way we do things will fall outside the rules by some means and we won’t be forced to increase prices.”

The Government apparently believes that its existing legislation might be enough to force through a solution, although what form that might take and how much benefit it would bring is currently open to debate. Ultimately mobile operators are independent commercial companies and the Government aren’t yet proposing to nationalise their infrastructure.

However it’s worth remembering that Ofcom are currently also threatening a massive licence fee hike to operators of the 900MHz and older 1800MHz radio spectrum (here) and it wouldn’t surprise us if a limited agreement could be reached that would also involve some mitigation of that threatened rise.

Lest we not forget that there’s a General Election coming next year, so expect plenty of new promises and big ideas.. many of which won’t materialise.

UPDATE 9:55am

The Mobile Operators Association (MOA), which represents all four of the major operators on issues of radio spectrum and planning, has said “National roaming isn’t the silver bullet that is being suggested. It will take years to implement and will not address the problem of notspots. National roaming would be a disincentive to build more infrastructure. And it is technically difficult and expensive to set up national roaming, and customers would face more dropped calls.”

Instead the MOA has said that a better course of action to boost mobile coverage would be to both reform the Electronic Communications Code (ECC) and remove barriers like costly business rates in rural areas and expensive backhaul / power supplies.