16 New UK Publicly Funded 4G Mobile Mast Upgrades Now Live

The next batch of four government-funded rural 4G (mobile broadband) mast upgrades have gone live in some of Britain’s most visited national parks, which forms part of the industry-led £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project with EE (BT), Vodafone, Three UK and O2 (Virgin Media).

The SRN – supported by £501m of public funding and £532m from operators – involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between the operators (MNO). The target is to extend geographic 4G coverage (aggregate) to 95% of the UK by the end of 2025, which falls to 84% when only considering the areas where you’ll be able to take 4G from all providers.

Most of the early work on the SRN has typically involved private investment from the main mobile network operators, although over the past year we’ve also seen government-funded mast upgrades taking place in other parts of the UK (examples here, here and here).

The latest 4 sites to be upgraded today include areas of outstanding natural beauty across England and Wales, such as Snowdonia, the Shropshire Hills, the Wye Valley, and the Brecon Beacons. This element of the SRN sees the government (DSIT) providing a total of £184m from the £500m public SRN funding to the Home Office and mobile network operators to help upgrade Extended Area Service (EAS) masts being built as part of the 4G Emergency Services Network (ESN), which helps to eliminate total not-spot areas.

Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Telecoms, said:

“We want everyone to be able to enjoy the breath-taking views of our mountains, parks, and lakes and this connectivity boost without any impact on scenery will give visitors the peace of mind to be able to call a friend should they get lost, or find their way to enjoy a much-needed lunch break in a local pub.”

So far a total of 16 EAS mast upgrades have been switched on – including 13 in Wales, 1 in Scotland and 2 in England. Overall, the SRN has already led to an additional 14,800 square kilometres – an area roughly the size of Northern Ireland or two million football pitches – receiving 4G coverage from all four operators. The government and the UK’s four mobile network operators ultimately aim to provide coverage to an additional 280,000 premises and 16,000km of the UK’s roads.

The SRN includes two key targets. The first involves the delivery of industry funded coverage improvements in Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas (i.e. areas that receive coverage from at least one operator, but not all), which needed to be achieved by June 2024 – at this point 4G (mobile broadband) must cover 88% of the UK’s landmass (EE, Vodafone and O2 all claim to have achieved this, but Three UK appear to be lagging behind).

The second target involves Total Not-Spot (TNS) areas by early 2027. Just to be clear, Ofcom’s licence obligations commit each individual operator to increase its 4G coverage to 88% of the UK’s landmass by June 2024 – rising to 90% by January 2027 – with these individual obligations supporting the overall target of 95% by December 2025.

Ofcom are currently reviewing the progress of the SRN scheme, which follows some earlier criticism of the programme by both the National Audit Office (here) and Public Accounts Committee (here). But at least some of the concerns over progress have recently been tackled (here and here).