Rural Mobile Connectivity

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government and service providers to help improve mobile connectivity in rural areas.

I start by thanking the Backbench Business Committee for granting time to hold this vital debate and for granting us a second opportunity to do so, as the debate had to be postponed earlier this year because of overrunning Government business. I declare my interest as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital communities.

As MP and resident of one of the most rural constituencies in England, I know from first-hand experience how frustrating it is to try to call the office or family members from a mobile phone. Whether at home, travelling around by car, out in the countryside or—more rarely, I have to say—travelling by train or bus, there is always a significant chance that we will not be able to make a phone call or connect to the internet.

This has a very real impact on my constituents’ lives. Stories of people being forced to sit in the loft or stand in the one spot in the garden with signal, regardless of the weather, would sometimes verge on comical if they were not so serious. For constituents waiting for their GP to call or for their disabled daughter to say they have made it to work okay, or for constituents in their 90s who have been left without power or heating, this situation is not funny at all. In the words of Terence, a disabled 80-year-old veteran:

“What is really annoying is that I am paying the same amount for my unreliable mobile service that someone in an area with good mobile signal pays.”

This week, I asked people to share their mobile signal experience with a single Facebook post. Within a day, 400 people had commented to share how awful it is in their area; whether they were in St Martins or Selattyn, in Welshampton or Woore, it was the same incredibly frustrating story. As one constituent said:

“Finding 4G is like striking gold.”

It is not just North Shropshire where reliable signal is such a rare commodity; it is the same in rural areas up and down the country. Elderly residents in sheltered accommodation are forced into digital isolation, out of contact with their families. Others have forked out for the privilege of playing provider bingo. As another constituent told me:

“Our adult daughter has a disability and learning issues, so having a good signal is imperative to us. Because of this, all three of us are on different networks (EE, O2 and Vodafone) so that we can ‘work the system’ and find the best signal available, at additional cost to us.”

That might have been acceptable 20 years ago, when mobile phones were a novel piece of technology and people could rely on letters and landlines, but in 2026, when landlines have been switched to digital and Royal Mail reaches the house once a week or even once a fortnight, it is simply not good enough. Mobile phones are an essential part of daily life, yet huge swathes of the country are being forced to cope with a substandard service. People have to put up with not just awful coverage but being gaslighted by companies telling them that their signal is just fine.

One of the biggest issues that comes up time and again, in my work as both MP for North Shropshire and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on digital communities, is the mapping data provided by the industry to Ofcom, which is often false. In July, the River Severn Partnership advanced wireless innovation region, which is funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, conducted the UK’s largest independent survey of mobile coverage in partnership with Streetwave, supported by over 30 councils through the use of their bin lorry routes. The report confirmed a significant difference between Ofcom’s view of mobile network capability and the real-world experience endured by those of us in rural areas.

Ofcom stated that 1.45% of geographical areas were considered areas without “good” voice capability from at least one of the four network operators, while the River Severn Partnership showed that it was 15.33% of postcodes. That is a huge difference.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, a fellow Shropshire MP, for giving way. Part of my constituency used to be her constituency, and she will know that there are lots of small rural businesses that rely on connectivity, not just broadband but cellular connectivity and being able to take and make telephone calls. Will the hon. Lady join me in calling on the Minister—as I previously have done—to ensure that Ofcom requires greater transparency and integrity in the data that the mobile companies are providing to all our constituents and, more importantly, that Ofcom is more robust and takes action when it thinks that the data is not as accurate as it could be?

[Helen Morgan]

The right hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, makes an extremely good point. The quality of the data is critical. One of the recommendations of the APPG is exactly that: to ensure that data is reliable and that Ofcom can challenge it where they know that it is inadequate.

There is a huge difference in which areas are considered to be without “good” voice capability. Ofcom disputes Streetwave’s findings because of the methodology that it used, but the experience of those of us who live in rural areas suggests that it is Ofcom that is wrong. It is no good telling people that their service is good when their own phone is telling them that it not. Unless Ofcom establishes clear requirements to define the quality of service that networks must deliver, how can we ensure real regulatory accountability?

Put simply, Ofcom and the Government must do more. I welcome the Government’s recognition of the need to improve coverage reporting in the statement of strategic priorities that it published yesterday, but at the moment we do not have the information that we need.

I do not know about you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I think people in rural areas are sick to death of being told to believe that they have never had it so good, discounting their own daily experience. Last year, Ofcom increased the accuracy of its mapping data by zoning in on smaller areas. However, if network operators do not have accurate data about the areas that need improvement —and we think that they do not—then investment is unlikely to be put into the areas of greatest need.

The shared rural network initiative, which has delivered, I have to say, no noticeable improvement in my area, involved the then four mobile network operators spending half a billion of their money to end partial notspots, based on the Ofcom data that has now been superseded and that we all suspect is a bit on the dodgy side.

EE—the same company as BT and Openreach—already had an extensive network of mobile masts, and it met its obligations in advance of the June 2024 deadline for the shared rural network, while other operators experienced delays. Some of the causes of delays are difficult to overcome. It is difficult to get planning permission for a new mast; there is a lack of planning resource in local authorities; there are logistical challenges to building masts in remote and rural areas; and there are issues over access to land.

Another part of the problem was that EE did not share access to its masts, because it failed to reach agreement with the other mobile network operators. That was a commercial negotiation into which I do not have insight, but the reality is that better coverage could have been achieved simply through effective equipment sharing. My Bill, the Access to Telecommunications Networks Bill, sought to fix the problem by requiring telecommunications companies to share their equipment; penalising them if they did not; and, in areas where they did not, requiring people to be enabled to roam between networks. We are all familiar with that issue if we have travelled in Europe.