5G Connectivity: Telford and West Midlands

Warinder Juss Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Shaun Davies]

I agree with my Shropshire neighbour. This is a rural issue and an urban one. A mobile signal is very much like a utility; people expect it to work for both their personal life and their work-related life.

Telford and Wrekin council kindly shared with me a report containing research by the River Severn Partnership. Between 2024 and 2025, it found a “significant difference” between what Ofcom estimated 5G coverage to be and real-world experience. The survey found that 28% of Telford postcodes did not have a good phone signal, but Ofcom claims there is not a single postcode in Telford where the signal is poor. Again, that is in direct contrast to the lived experiences of our residents. This goes to the heart of the problem and it is exactly what our residents are saying: what Ofcom and the Government say just does not live up to the real-life experiences.

In an answer to a written question last January, the then Minister for Data Protection and Telecoms, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), told me that 99% of all premises in my constituency have 5G available. I am not in any way attributing blame to that Minister, because I know that the Government get their data from Ofcom, which in turn gets its data from the network providers, and those network providers told me in a meeting this week that their data is provided through computer generation and analytics. The real-life experiences of residents are not taken into consideration.

The Local Government Association—an organisation with which I am very familiar—authored a report with the all-party parliamentary group on digital communities. That report was very validating for my constituents. It said that residents who make complaints are not imagining things, and the association took the same issue with Ofcom’s data, confirming that

“while Ofcom’s regulatory oversight has supported progress in expanding digital infrastructure, significant concerns remain about the accuracy of coverage data. The current system relies heavily on operator-supplied modelling, which often fails to reflect the lived experiences of residents.”

I want to make it clear that there are two sides to this problem, but they are connected. We need better reporting of 5G coverage, although obviously my constituents care more about improving the coverage itself. The path to better 5G infrastructure in my constituency and other constituencies across the west midlands requires an acknowledgment that there is a problem in the first place.

[Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has made some excellent points. Tettenhall in my constituency is a significantly populated suburb of Wolverhampton, where residents face similar problems to those highlighted by my hon. Friend. Constituents say that they have little or no signal and they struggle to make contact with family and friends. The other day, a constituent told me that he had difficulty contacting the emergency services because there was no mobile phone connectivity.

My hon. Friend is right to say that very often the problem is considered to be in rural areas but that more densely populated areas, such as Tettenhall, have similar problems. Does my hon. Friend agree that in this day and age we need to ensure that there is connectivity everywhere?

[Shaun Davies]

I completely agree. My hon. Friend makes the excellent point that this issue is not just about economic growth and access to public services, though that is important; it is also about access to lifesaving services in an emergency.

In case I have come across too negative, at this point I would like to acknowledge the progress that is being or will be made. I recently had the chance to meet officials and Baroness Lloyd who is a Minister in the Department for Science, Innovation and Skills, who informed me about Ofcom’s reporting tool—a map that enables my constituents to show Ofcom where they are not getting 5G signal—but I gently point out to the Minister that the expectation cannot simply be on our residents to report problems, when network providers are making millions in profit.

I have written to Ofcom and providers, including O2, EE, 3 and BT. I found them all to be responsive, and I met some of them this week and will do so again. It is so important that we seek action. Although what they say sounds great in principle, I hope that providers will forgive me and my constituents for saying that we will believe it when we see it, because ultimately the test is whether, in 2026, people can connect to a 4G or 5G signal.