EE UK Advisor Calls for Joined-up Gov Approach to Fix Mobile Notspots

EE’s Director of Public Policy on Coverage, Kip Meek, has told ISPreview.co.uk that it is critical for the Government to adopt a more “joined up approach” as otherwise they may struggle to meet their revised coverage obligations. In particular EE wants to see fair rents for mast sites and more infrastructure sharing.

At the end of last year all of the major mobile operators came to an agreement with the Government (here) and agreed to invest £5bn (most of this is believed to reflect existing investment) in order to extend their geographic network coverage (voice and text) of the United Kingdom from 80% today to 90% by 2017 (3G and 4G data coverage will also be pushed from 69% to 85%).

On top of that the Government has another £150m Mobile Infrastructure Project (MIP), which was set-up several years ago to extend mobile network coverage into areas where there is currently none. But so far all of the major network operators have struggled to meet the new requirements, not least due to the many challenges of bringing new masts to remote locations.

Operators often face a long consultation process in order to gain planning approval, which can be scuppered by local opposition. At the same time there are challenges with the high cost of land access (private land owners can charge a lot), as well as the difficulties of running the necessary power supply and back-haul capacity to remote locations (example).

At one point it had been hoped that an update of the Electronic Communications Code (ECC), which enables communications providers to construct their physical networks, might help to iron out some of these issues, but that has faced several setbacks and strong opposition from private land owners (here and here).

Kip Meek told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Great coverage and affordable services need an overhaul of the ECC, planning reform and, critically, we need a joined up approach in government to give us the means to meet the demands of our revised coverage obligation.

We’re concerned that wireless infrastructure providers could be exempt from long overdue reforms of the ECC. Changes to the code should support operators paying fair rents for sites and allow sharing and upgrade of kit.

For a rural site we typically pay rents of nearly 30-times what an energy company would pay. That is clearly too great a gap if we are to offer the best possible coverage. We’d also like to have quicker access to sites when thing go wrong.”

Mind you not everybody wants a big mobile mast overlooking their back garden and so there is always going to be opposition, which local politicians have to respect for fear of losing their seat. As such any changes that attempt to ride roughshod over public opinion or the rights of private land owners will always be difficult to pass.

Never the less Kip Meek suggests that a balance can still be found, not least because he claims that a growing number of communities are now more concerned with gaining better coverage than the visual impact of having a tall mast in the area. However this opinion does vary quite strongly from place to place.

Kip Meek added:

“It is always about a balance. Without masts you can’t have scale coverage. Our experience is that over the years local media stories have generally shifted from being about people who are hostile to new mast sites, towards people crying out for better coverage.

Most people will spend an entire day without seeing a mast or antennae site and not even think about it, but if they lose coverage it is generally something that they are immediately conscious of. We can’t escape physics. Slightly taller masts will offer greater coverage – something that is critical to filling in that gaps. Taller masts mean fewer of them.”

The obvious alternative approach to having a single tall mast is to use a greater number of smaller ones, although that takes even longer and is more complicated due to the greater number of sites that need planning applications. Not to mention the multiplication of costs from capacity, power and land access fees etc.

Some operators, such as Vodafone, are also using Femtocell technology in order to boost local signals by harnessing the power of local fixed line broadband connections. However some areas still suffer from poor broadband connectivity and this approach would also be very costly and complicated to scale-up across a wider area.

Meanwhile the Government still intends to update the ECC and a related consultation recently ran until April 2015 (here), but so far we haven’t seen much progress on that front and unless this changes soon then it’s the network operators who are likely to take the blame when progress falls short of expectations. At the same time the Government clearly has a very difficult balancing act to perform.