Shared Rural Network Implementation

Greg Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Greg Smith (Buckingham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria, and I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this very important debate. I am lucky enough to represent a constituency that is 335 square miles of pure, beautiful, rural Buckinghamshire. Mobile signal is critical, day to day, in many walks of life. There has been a growth in the number of people working from home, and many try to take Zoom or Teams calls in local cafés. My children endlessly demand that we stream all sorts of dreadful songs to make the journey go a bit quicker, but often, as we go through the villages, Siri delivers that dreaded message: there is a problem because it cannot get a data signal. That comes up time and again when I talk to constituents.

On my summer surgery tour last year, I went to the village of Cuddington, which is not far from my village of Chearsley, in which people also struggle to get mobile signal, particularly inside buildings. Constituents in Cuddington were saying that they literally could not get a signal on any network in that village. That is absolutely devastating for people. They may need to make an emergency call, or they may have an urgent work commitment—they need to get that email out—and they simply cannot do it. It is a huge problem. While the shared rural network is a brilliant idea and a fantastic initiative, we need to put a rocket underneath it to get it working far more quickly.

There really is not a technological excuse for this. Many moons ago, on my honeymoon in the middle of the Masai Mara, I was struck by the fact that there was not a building to be seen, yet there was still a strong 4G signal on my mobile phone. I was part of a delegation to rural Israel just a couple of weeks ago. We went down to the Gaza border. Some of those places had been so brutally attacked that they were literally in ruins, yet there was still a solid 4G—and at times 5G— signal on my mobile phone, but when I am waiting to pick up my son outside the school gates, I cannot even check my WhatsApp messages.

My message to the Minister is that this is a brilliant initiative, but it needs the Government to put a real boost underneath it, and to put pressure on industry. I fully accept and congratulate EE for being ahead of the curve on this, but we need all the networks to be ahead of the curve on this, and we need to get this right for all of our rural constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

Perhaps at some point the hon. Lady might like to update us on the progress and success of the R100 programme and its impact on constituents.

I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for highlighting some of the issues in Borgie in particular. I will happily take up the issue of Jean’s folly and see whether we can make any progress on it. I thank the hon. Member for highlighting cases showing the real-life impact that poor connectivity can have.

Before I respond to points raised by other hon. Members, it might be helpful if I explain how the SRN will be implemented across the UK and what has been achieved for some time when it comes to boosting mobile coverage. To deliver the programme, the operators are investing about half a billion pounds to eliminate the majority of partial notspots, which are the areas that receive coverage from at least one but not all four operators. The Government will then go even further and tackle the total number of notspots with our contribution of half a billion pounds. Those are the hardest-to-reach rural areas that currently have no 4G coverage at all.

By upgrading existing networks and working together on shared infrastructure in new sites, we will transform mobile coverage in rural areas and—this is key—maximising the use of existing infrastructure. I was particularly glad to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan about how we are seeing that sharing of infrastructure in his constituency. We want to minimise environmental impacts, but also ensure best value for the taxpayer.

One of the ways we are trying to speed up roll-out is by easing the planning process. Several hon. Members raised the need to make more straightforward the erection of new infrastructure, as we did in the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Act 2022. It can be a difficult balance, because a number of hon. Members are unhappy about the siting of masts, and we are encouraging operators to put in mast applications in sensible places. To have engagement with local authorities, I wrote to all councils to set out where they have powers in that regard. I also raised the matter with Ofcom, because I know that there are some issues in particular parts of the country. We want to make sure that we can ease people’s concerns about the impact of mast infrastructure on communities, because pausing roll-out on that basis is in nobody’s interest.

[Greg Smith]

I have multiple examples, particularly of 5G masts. One was quite literally put in somebody’s back garden, right on the fence line; another, in Monks Risborough, was right on the edge of a shopping parade. Are the networks actually being receptive to my hon. Friend’s demands? Are we seeing a real change in where they are putting in applications to put up the new infrastructure?

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. One of the challenges is trying to get that transparency and get data and information that goes beyond the anecdotal, to give us a proper picture of what is happening on the ground. It seems to me that this is happening in particular areas with particular companies, so I am trying to get that information. In the meantime, I am talking to Ofcom and local authorities and trying to understand where there are problems. There are also working groups between altnets so that there can be better sharing of mast infrastructure, which I think will ease some of the challenges.