Gov Sets Out Policy to Boost UK Mobile and Broadband Infrastructure

The Government has published a new document that very roughly sets out some of the legislation that will be made over the coming months and years in order to ensure the delivery of “world-class digital infrastructure in every part of the UK“. Some of the measures include plans to allow taller mobile masts and reduce fibre broadband deployment costs.

The document (Fixing the foundations: Creating a more prosperous nation) appears designed to be taken alongside the Government’s on-going Digital Communications Infrastructure Strategy, which is an effort to develop a long term strategy for helping to ensure that the United Kingdom has the “best connectivity” by 2025-2030 (phone, broadband, mobile etc.).

Sadly you won’t find an awful lot of detail inside and most of what is proposed has already been covered in our news over the past few months (e.g. reforming the Electronic Communications Code etc.), but it is at least confirmation of what we can expect to see going forward.

The Planned Changes

* The government proposes to extend permitted development rights to taller mobile masts in both protected and non-protected areas in England. A call for evidence on these proposals has been published today.
* The government intends to introduce legislation in the first session of this Parliament to reform the Electronic Communications Code, which regulates the relationship between electronic communications network operators and site providers.
* The government will be consulting later this year on implementation of the EU Directive on measures to reduce the cost of deploying high-speed communications networks.
* The government is also considering making the 2013 planning relaxations supporting fixed high speed broadband infrastructure rollout permanent.

The paper, which also targets “near universal” coverage of “ultrafast” 100Mbps+ broadband connectivity, boasts that boosting investment in high speed broadband will support long-term economic growth, with GVA increasing by £6.3bn and causing a net increase of 20,000 jobs in the UK by 2024 (UK Broadband Impact Study 2013).

Much of this is of course already envisaged to result from the existing Broadband Delivery UK programme and other mobile improvement policies, although some policies might be harder to pass than others (example). See our summaries of the March 2015 Budget and the Summer Budget 2015 for a better roundup.