Ofcom CEO – The £6bn Cost of Truly Universal UK Mobile Coverage

The CEO of Ofcom, Sharon White, yesterday told the Connected Britain event in London that to provide good mobile network (4G etc.) coverage across virtually all of the UK landmass would cost up to around £6 billion and is likely to require some form of cross subsidy.

As previously reported, next year will see the national telecoms regulator auctioning off the 700MHz band (formerly used for Digital Terrestrial TV services) for use by future Mobile technologies (e.g. 5G). The lower frequency of this band makes it ideal for delivering wide geographic coverage, not unlike the 800MHz band before it.

This is important because at the point where Ofcom sell 700MHz in 2019, they estimate that 200,000 rural UK homes and offices will still lack a good signal for mobile data and calls – from any operator. Admittedly EE aim to cover 95% of the UK’s landmass with their 4G network by the end of December 2020 (currently 90%), but they’re only one operator (we don’t all want to be EE customers) and that would still leave 5% to do.

The 700MHz auction has already proposed to improve this by suggesting the addition of a new coverage obligation (details), which would require both better indoor reception and on top of that at least two operators must commit to reach 92% of the UK land area with good reception. But yesterday the focus was on how Ofcom will then get to 100% in the future (no time-scale was given).

Sharon White, Ofcom’s CEO, said:

“This week we have provided technical advice to the government on how they might extend mobile coverage even further.

As we get beyond 92% of the UK’s geography and potentially towards 100%, increasing coverage means building masts in remote areas with no mobile signal at all.

Our view is that some form of cross subsidy would be necessary to do this. To keep costs down, there would be a strong case for contracting a single operator to build and operate masts where there are currently none, which all customers could then use.

How much would it cost? According to our estimates, to provide good mobile coverage across virtually all of the UK landmass would cost up to about £6 billion. That is an approximate number. It would need to be refined as operators gain practical experience in outlying areas. But it helps to illustrate the cost.

Improving mobile reception is a national priority, and we will continue to work closely with DCMS to explore every available solution.”

The figure of £6bn seems a bit on the high side for such a deployment but no doubt Ofcom have a far better understanding of the costs involved than we do. The idea of a cross subsidy approach is also an interesting one, although it’s worth remembering that none of this would overcome the usual obstructions from planning permission, getting a good power supply / data capacity to the mast, wayleaves and local opposition etc.

Suffice to say that reaching 100% won’t just be expensive, it’ll also face many obstacles and that could seriously hinder the pace of deployment. But for now it’s still just something that’s being debated and there’s no solid plan behind it.