Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to improve geographic mobile phone coverage in rural areas in Scotland.

Commercial roll-out and spectrum licence obligations have led to improved mobile coverage in Scotland. As of June 2017 indoor premises voice coverage in Scotland was 99% from at least one mobile network operator (MNO) and 87% from all four (up 6 percentage points from June 2016). Indoor premises data coverage was 98% from at least one MNO and 82% from all four (up 8 percentage points from June 2016).

However, geographic coverage is lower and the Government recognises that there is more to do. That is why we reformed the Electronic Communications Code in 2017,to make it cheaper to install digital infrastructure and this should also benefit rural areas in Scotland. I also welcome the Scottish Government's planning reforms in July 2017 that follow our 2016 reforms in England to support infrastructure rollout. We are committed to having good quality coverage where people live, work and travel and I welcome that Ofcom is considering new licence obligations for rural coverage as part of the upcoming 700 MHz spectrum auction.