Mobile Operators Fear UK 5G Rollout At Risk from Dispute with Leasing Firm

Mobile network operators (e.g. EE, Vodafone, O2 and Three UK) appear to be increasingly raising concerns over the impact that leasing firm AP Wireless is having on their already sluggish deployment of 5G based mobile broadband technology. This is said to be pushing up their build costs and thus allegedly threatening the viability of future deployments.

In the past it wasn’t uncommon for landowners to extract highly lucrative rental agreements in return for allowing telecoms operators to lease their land in order to deploy new infrastructure (e.g. mobile masts, trenches for optical fibre etc.). But this often made it too expensive for mobile operators to expand their coverage as much as they would have liked, which inhibited the roll-out of new services, particularly in less lucrative rural areas.

The government started to correct this in 2017 by revising the Electronic Communications Code (ECC) to make it easier and cheaper for operators to access public or private land (here). But that initially swung the problem back in the other direction (here and here) and resulted in some providers, particularly mobile operators, trying to force the adoption of dramatically lower rents (e.g. slashing some rents to just a few tens of pounds).

However, over the past few years we’ve seen a number of tribunal rulings and wider political efforts, which have helped to produce a fairer balance (e.g. here and here). At the same time, the new Government has signalled that they want to make a “renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030.” But now mobile operators are raising concerns over a new problem that, they warn, could disrupt such plans.

The issue appears to stem from how AP Wireless, and its affiliated Icon Tower company, are behaving. Mobile operators have historically tended to lease their land directly from landowners, but more recently APW has been stepping in to buy mast leases from existing landowners and then charging mobile operators a premium to use the same sites. APW has also won some tribunal cases that have raised the rentals for certain sites (example).

According to a new report on the Telegraph (paywall), APW’s sister company, Icon Tower, has recently been constructing brand new mobile masts, often close to its existing sites. “These new masts are not subject to rent protections owing to a loophole in the ECC regulations. Operators have accused the infrastructure group of attempting to force them on to these new masts when existing leases expire – a move they say will pave the way for sharp rent increases,” said the newspaper.

Mobile operators complain that Icon Tower is planning to build many more sites in this way, which has them worried enough that Cornerstone (the mast sharing joint venture between Vodafone and O2) is now locked in a legal battle with APW over the issue and an 8-day court hearing is taking place this month. This is to say nothing of prior tribunal cases, with one network operator claiming to ISPreview that up to 80% of tribunal cases (estimate) now concern APW directly.

An industry spokesman said:

“The land aggregator’s business model, whereby they appear to be seeking to force operators off an existing mast which has legal protections, to a replacement one that doesn’t, is a cynical ploy to bypass the code to solicit higher rents off the mobile operators.

Far from assisting the deployment of critical national infrastructure, land aggregators are hindering rollout and in some cases actively duplicating existing masts simply to force operators off perfectly good ones impacting on the existing coverage and capacity vital to the people they serve.”

The mobile operators argue that the only ones who really benefit from this are “the land aggregators themselves“. But a spokesperson for APW disputes this and claims that the entry of Icon Tower into the market will “lead to lower costs for mobile phone users by increasing competition” (this is fairly debatable). “This litigation is an attempt to shut out competition in the market for mobile telephone infrastructure and protect a monopolistic position,” said APW. But some might argue that APW’s approach is not much better.

On the flip side, APW claims that their approach is about fighting for fairness over rents, which is perhaps one of the reasons why they’re often opposed to further reform of the ECC (i.e. this may threaten the premiums they charge by making it easier or cheaper for operators to build/upgrade mast sites) and established the Protect & Connect campaign a few years ago.

Finding the right balance between landowners and mobile operators has never been an easy or simple task, but this area now appears to be getting much more complex for all involved. The mobile operators would naturally like the Government to take more of an interest in all this, particularly given their efforts to foster 5G deployments. But government’s also have a nasty tendency to do things in a retrospective way, and operators are worried that by then it may be too late.