BT Consumer CEO Marc Allera has proposed a new cross-industry Rural Mobile Coverage Pledge to address areas with partial coverage in a fair and equitable manner, and to deliver a unified approach to mobile notspots.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, Allera said that a different approach was needed for rural mobile coverage. He said that Ofcom's plans to attach coverage obligations to new mobile airwaves was good in principle, but would not overcome the barriers that make it so hard to expand network coverage.
The proposed Rural Coverage Pledge would give local communities in areas of zero coverage the right to ask for coverage, to work with local councils and operators to identify locations and permissions, and to establish mobile signal where it is needed most. Allera said that this Pledge would require Government support to overcome planning challenges and unlock funding, offer better access to public building rooftops, and approval for deploying taller mobile masts.
Allera also said that the Pledge must work to address partial notspots, where areas are covered by one or two operators, to encourage mobile mast sharing on fair and appropriate terms, without any network operator 'free-riding' on the back of another operator's network investment.
