Mobile Phone Signal (Fownhope)

Debate between Nigel Adams and Bill Wiggin

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Today is the first day of the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. Fifteen years ago, at the 2000 show, Bill Gates presented an early version of the tablet computer and Nokia presented a device that had an electronic diary and could make phone calls. Today, many colleagues find their tablet an indispensable tool in their parliamentary and constituency work, and we take it for granted that our mobile phones have in-built diary and note functions. We are living in a fast-paced world where technology is constantly developing and making great leaps forward.

I want my constituents in North Herefordshire to be able to benefit from the latest in innovative technology. However, as those in London start looking at 4G and possibly even faster mobile phone connections, my constituents are being left behind. Too many parts of North Herefordshire and other rural areas suffer from patchy or non-existent mobile phone reception. It is indeed telling that while I am holding this Adjournment debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) held an earlier debate in Westminster Hall on mobile phone signal and internet connections in Herefordshire. He and I think that more needs to be done to address the problem, particularly in rural areas such as the beautiful county of Herefordshire, which we are both proud to represent.

The Government are now keen to improve the situation and launched the mobile infrastructure project to help tackle not spots. Many will remember that the Prime Minister told a newspaper in an interview last summer that he had to return from his holiday in Cornwall in 2011 and 2013 because of poor signal; he was twice forced to return to London so that he could remain updated on the fall of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi and on the Syrian conflict respectively. The Prime Minister at that point restated his desire to tackle not spots across the country. However, although the Prime Minister can return to London to keep updated, my constituents need a better signal where they are. The solution for the residents of North Herefordshire cannot and should not be to go to London.

It was also in the summer of 2014 that I learned that Fownhope, a village in North Herefordshire, had suffered a blow in its quest for improved mobile signal. Fownhope had been selected to have a new mobile phone mast as part of the mobile infrastructure project. Instead of that being good news for the village, it became clear over the summer that the proposed mast for Fownhope was not going to proceed. The mast had already been through pre-planning and the proposal was in the public domain. Not only was that a terrible blow to the prospects of improvements to mobile phone reception in the village, but thanks to prior publicity of the mast there was notable public disappointment for Fownhope residents, whose hopes had been dashed. In July I visited Fownhope and accepted a petition, signed by over 300 villagers, about the decision.

I was initially informed that Arqiva, the company running the project on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, had found that some not spot areas that were originally targeted for the project had existing mobile coverage. I later discovered what had happened in the case of Fownhope after asking the Minister a number of written questions. It appears that not spot data are compiled and held by Ofcom, with information provided by the mobile network operators. The planning for the mobile infrastructure project was based on data originally provided in 2010. Since 2010 the operators have made changes to their networks, including consolidating and sharing sites, which had an impact on the locations of not spots. In March 2014 the mobile network operators submitted updated information on where they thought they had coverage, as predicted by desktop planning tools. The information was compiled by Ofcom and fed into Arqiva, which subsequently altered its plans accordingly. The updated information showed that coverage had improved in Fownhope since the inception of the mobile infrastructure project in 2010. That meant that Fownhope was no longer eligible for the project and the proposed phone mast was withdrawn.

In some areas where coverage was thought to be marginal or there was uncertainty about coverage, Department for Culture, Media and Sport officials commissioned on the ground drive testing to assess the level of coverage. On the ground drive testing did not happen at Fownhope. Instead, Ofcom chose to rely on the mobile phone operators’ maps to assess coverage and did not carry out the tests for all 34,000 not spots across the UK containing premises. Before removing Fownhope from the mobile infrastructure project, Arqiva did not assess the reception in Fownhope or visit the village. Instead, it relied on the data provided by the mobile operators to Ofcom.

In early September I met Arqiva representatives, who confirmed the process whereby the mobile network operators send Ofcom their maps, which are overlaid on top of one another to give an exact area where there is no signal. They said that if there is even a hint of a signal from one operator, even a poor signal, in an area previously deemed to be a not spot, that is sufficient under state aid rules for the phone mast to be withdrawn. I do not believe that this process is ideal because people pay the same amount for 2G as a person receiving 3G or even 4G, so there is an inbuilt incentive for phone operators to claim that their coverage is better than it really is. That should change, as my constituents in Fownhope and other areas are being grossly overcharged for a service that is unsatisfactory.

In October I formally met the Secretary of State about the mobile phone signal and the removal of the proposed mast for Fownhope. During the meeting I handed over to my right hon. Friend the petition that I had received about the mast, with more than 300 signatures. As a result of our meeting, he asked Ofcom specifically to go to Fownhope to check the strength of the mobile signal, rather than relying on data maps provided by the phone operators. Although this offer to test the signal did not necessarily mean that Fownhope would get its mast, it reassured me that the decision on whether or not to proceed would be based on accurate data—or at least, I hoped it would—instead of predictions made by the mobile network operators.

A recent report published earlier this year jointly by Which? and OpenSignal based on over 67 million data readings taken from over 39,000 users of the OpenSignal app showed that the coverage for users significantly differs from the coverage maps provided by the mobile companies.

Ofcom did visit Fownhope and came back to me with its results—extraordinarily—yesterday. What a lucky thing we had the debate timetabled for today, or we may never have known what the results were. It is far from clear from the results what Ofcom will decide. It has produced a picture of Herefordshire covered with little red dots and little green dots. The red dots indicate no signal; the green dots show an adequate signal. There is a little patch around Fownhope covered in orange dots. There are large numbers of red dots, the odd green one and huge numbers of orange dots. The report says, I believe, that Ofcom has not decided yet what an orange dot means. It is going away to think about it. But what it means is that people cannot make a mobile phone call from Fownhope, even if they are lucky. However, we will see what Ofcom tells the Minister in due course.

During our meeting with the Secretary of State, he mentioned his plans to introduce national roaming. At present someone from abroad holidaying in Herefordshire whose phone is set to roam will get a better mobile signal than a Herefordian. I agreed with the Secretary of State that this was not fair or satisfactory.

On 5 November the Government launched a consultation on improving mobile phone reception. I urged my constituents to respond to it. Many of them took part in it and many more told me about the problems they were having with mobile phone reception. One constituent told me that they have to go upstairs in their house and lean out of the window to get a decent signal, and another said that he can make mobile phone calls within his home only from one small corner of his kitchen.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

I place on the record my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a director and shareholder of two telecoms companies. I, too, have to lean out of my window to get a mobile signal at home. Does my hon. Friend agree that the roll-out of certain technologies with wi-fi calling means that the rolling out of the mobile phone signal in bad areas goes hand in hand with the roll-out of broadband signal across the country?

[Bill Wiggin]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He cannot begin to imagine my delight when our new coalition Government chose Herefordshire to be one of the four pilot schemes for the roll-out of superfast broadband. The whole point of a pilot scheme is that one learns from one’s experiment—but oh no, so pleased were the Government with the pilot scheme that they decided roll it out everywhere, irrespective of how well it was working. At this point, people who had fallen into the pilot scheme areas for superfast broadband found that they were not at an advantage any more and very quickly became at a disadvantage. Instead of receiving superfast broadband by 2015, perfectly timed, with all the political intuition required of a Government, to coincide with the general election, we will not get our superfast broadband in Herefordshire until 2016.

That is of course a bitter disappointment to me, but more so to the people who live in places such as Fownhope who could have seen a better use of technology to piggy-back a better mobile phone signal from a superfast broadband link. This is particularly bizarre given the fantastic military infrastructure we have in Herefordshire, and the broadband delivery to all our schools. The superfast highway does exist. It is not a magic thing that needs to be created; it is there and we have not managed to exploit it in the way that we should have done. I extend my total sympathy to my hon. Friend for having to lean out of the window for a signal. In my house, an orange signal means that one has to lean out of the bathroom window, but luckily O₂ is more effective.