Northern Ireland Ministers Call for Improvements to Rural Mobile Coverage

The Northern Ireland Assembly yesterday met to debate the need for improvements in rural mobile coverage, which among other things highlighted problems with “major delays in the planning process” for approving new 4G / 5G masts, the need for greater infrastructure sharing and question marks over what impact the barrier busting task force has actually had.

In case anybody has forgotten. The Department for the Economy (DfE) published a rather vague Mobile Action Plan for Northern Ireland (MAP NI) in June 2022, which set out a series of measures that the executive should take to help support the wider £1bn industry-led Shared Rural Network (SRN) project – aiming to extend geographic 4G / mobile broadband coverage (aggregate) to 95% of the UK by the end of 2025 (84% when only considering the areas where you’ll be able to take 4G from all providers).

The action plan proposed to look at ways of ensuring the planning system could support the roll-out of new mobile networks, foster Digital Champions within local authorities to help with operator engagement, enable greater use of publicly owned assets to support related infrastructure and establish a NI Barrier Busting Taskforce to tackle obstructions to such builds.

Since then, there has been some progress and Ofcom recently reported that the SRN project had largely achieved its first coverage target for Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas (here), which reflects locations that receive coverage from at least one operator, but not all. The PNS goal was for 4G to cover 88% of the UK’s landmass by the end of June 2024.

The regulator’s report noted that only Three UK failed to achieve the 88% UK target on time, although it should be noted that all four of the primary operators (EE, Three UK, O2 and Vodafone) managed to meet to even exceed the PSN target when only looking specifically at Northern Ireland:

Despite this, yesterday’s debate in the NI Assembly (here) saw ministers highlight how the barrier busting taskforce, which was established and met for the first time in December 2022, has since met only twice and few ministers seemed to know what, if anything, it had actually managed to achieve.

The debate also contained the usual complaints about gaps in rural mobile coverage, as well as a desire by some ministers to see greater sharing of mast sites (the SRN already does a lot of this) and calls for putting the building of new masts under Permitted Development (PD) rights (upgrades to existing masts are already partly covered by PD). But the latter was rejected by NI’s Minister for Infrastructure, John O’Dowd.

John O’Dowd, NI Minister for Infrastructure, said:

“I note Members’ concern about the fact that the [barrier busting] group has met only twice. Following the debate, I will undertake to go back and see what barriers there are to the barrier busting task force’s meeting. I will see whether we can ensure that the group meets more regularly and that the issues that are at the heart of concerns are dealt with in a way that they can be.

I suspect that some in the industry are seeking permitted developments for new masts etc, but I do not think that that is the road to go down. Some Members expressed concerns about the visual impact that telecommunications masts can have in rural communities. Some residents have also had concerns that, in some instances, have been ill-informed. It is only right and proper that, when new significant development is proposed in an area, communities have a right to raise their concerns and that those are dealt with appropriately through planning legislation.”

The debate ultimately ended with the assembly agreeing to issue a joint statement that recognised the “major delays in the planning process” (holding up some mast sites), but which doesn’t really say much in terms of how the big challenges should be resolved.

The Agreed Statement / Question

That this Assembly recognises the need for high-quality mobile coverage in rural communities across Northern Ireland; supports the roll-out of the Shared Rural Network (SRN) by the UK Government and four leading mobile network operators and welcomes progress to date; expresses concern that further investment in new and existing phone masts under this initiative has been jeopardised by major delays in the planning process; believes no community should be left behind as a consequence; acknowledges the work of the Department for the Economy in leading the barrier busting task force and its planning subgroup, including the involvement of the Department for Infrastructure, local councils and mobile network companies; endorses the aims of the subgroup to identify barriers relating to the planning system and to investigate best practice in mobile network development; further believes no community should be left behind; and calls on the Minister for Infrastructure to support the work of the task force to address the barriers to extending the 4G and 5G mobile network in rural areas, whilst respecting the principles of an inclusive planning system and ensuring the benefits of mobile coverage are maximised across this region.