News / No quick fix for mobile phone coverage
IMPROVING the poor mobile phone coverage in Shetland will take a long time and requires some innovative thinking, according to the industry body Mobile Operators Association.
Shetland MSP Tavish Scott met with representatives from the MOA as well as industry regulator Ofcom in Glasgow on Tuesday to discuss how some of the £150 million, announced by the UK government to improve the mobile network in rural areas, could be channelled towards the isles.
As it turned out no details of the scheme announced by chancellor George Osborne in early October were yet available.
The aim of the scheme is to increase mobile coverage to 99 per cent of the UK whereas at present only 90 per cent of Scotland and Wales gets a signal with many rural areas being far worse off.
Speaking after the meeting, John Cooke, an executive director with the MOA, said there was no “quick fix” to resolve the problem but insisted mobile operators were committed to work with communities and the government to find solutions.
Essentially, providing mobile phone connections in sparsely populated areas is commercially unattractive for companies, although they acknowledge that coverage is not as good as it could be.
Mr Cooke said: “There are areas in the country where there is no viable commercial business case, and where it is difficult and more expensive to provide a network infrastructure.
“The operators are keen to work with operators to extend coverage as far as possible, and part of the solution might well be the £150 million fund, possibly with some EU money as well.”
He said that recent solutions for providing better broadband to many rural communities, such as partnerships between operators and local government, could well be the model for also improving the mobile phone networks.
“At the moment we all wait to hear the details of what the new government money is all about, and how that can be deployed. We haven’t seen details of that and as far as I am aware the operators haven’t seen much detail either,” Mr Cooke said.
“This is not something that can be solved overnight with a magic wand. Certainly we will continue talking to everybody involved and see how government money can be leveraged into areas where there is no or poor coverage,” he added.
Mr Scott said the meeting industry representatives had been helpful in that it had been made very clear that “we have a case of market failure here in Shetland”.
He said local communities and the local authority had now to work together to make a case for the isles.
“The next stage therefore is for isles MP Alistair Carmichael to sort out with the department for culture, media and sport how this money is going to be made available and how Shetland can make a case for its share,” he added.
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