Frustration Over 6 Week EE 4G Outage on Lewis Reaches Parliament

The plight of residents and businesses around the remote rural community of Uig on the west coast of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides (Scotland), which was left without access to 4G for calls and mobile broadband after a fault impacted EE UK’s local mast, has reached the Scottish Parliament.

According to the Scottish Sun, around 400 people live in the area around Uig, including a local primary school and GP surgery. But many of these are reliant upon the 4G signal for both broadband and calls because the local fixed line connectivity doesn’t appear to reach everybody with a working connection. Even when the fixed lines are an option, the old ADSL service tends to be slower (in the deep sub-1Mbps category) than 4G.

Suffice to say that when the mast went out of action six weeks ago, the loss of service was more than a mild inconvenience for residents (e.g. the only shop couldn’t dispense cash or take card payments) and meant a total loss of all connectivity for some people. One person is even reported to have taken a 70-mile round trip to Stornoway just to access the internet, although they didn’t strictly need to go that far (e.g. FTTP lines cover Great Bernera, but not everybody will know that).

In taking a closer look at the area, we noted that at least some residents might still have been able to access a weak 3G or 4G signal from rival operators via different masts, although it’s not always possible or practical to swap mobile operators in the middle of a network outage. Put simply, EE has by far the best mast location for the community.

The issue has been going on for so long that it even reached yesterday’s Rural Broadband debate in the Scottish Parliament.

Extract from Yesterday’s Debate

Alasdair Allan (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)

The disruption to EE’s 4G mobile service, which my constituents in Uig have now been enduring for six weeks, has effectively cut off a huge geographic area from all broadband access and severely impacted on medical and other essential services. Given that, does the minister agree that EE’s response has been truly woeful? Will he commit to facilitating a meeting in Uig between the R100 team and the community?

Richard Lochhead (MSP for Moray – SNP)

That is clearly a very serious issue in Alasdair Allan’s constituency. Although ensuring that 4G mobile connectivity is maintained is a reserved part of UK telecommunications legislation—which means that the Scottish Government does not have a mechanism to intervene directly in such matters—we will certainly consider the member’s request and I will ensure that he is written to shortly.

Responsibility falls on Ofcom, as the UK’s telecoms regulator. However, as with the recent telecoms outages that were suffered on Shetland and Coll, we urge operators to ensure that they rectify such issues as a matter of urgency.

For our part, we are investing £28.75 million in the Scottish 4G infill programme, which is delivering 4G mobile infrastructure and services throughout rural Scotland, including the Western Isles.

But talk of an intervention may no longer be necessary. A spokesperson for EE said: “Following bad weather, engineers will be on site again tomorrow and Thursday to carry out further work. We are really sorry for any inconvenience caused. We understand that this fault has been more complex and has taken longer to resolve than we would normally expect, but we are working flat out to get service restored as soon as possible.”

Before publishing this article we did a quick check on the local network status and, from what we can tell, the local mast now appears to be working again and EE’s website reports that a network fault in the area has just been resolved. Nevertheless, six weeks is far too long to wait, although such extended downtime is sadly a risk in remote rural communities – particularly those on smaller islands.