UK Government’s approach to telecoms in rural areas is a complete shambles
YOUR front-page report on Saturday (“Rural communities ‘at risk’ in phone network switch”, The Herald, April 13) shows the UK Government’s approach to telecommunications provision in rural areas, a Westminster responsibility, is in a complete shambles.
People living in rural communities now face losing the ability to use their landlines during power cuts as a result of the changeover to digital technology. Meanwhile they are unable to resort to mobile phones in such circumstances because of large gaps in the network offered by the big four operators, a consequence of market competition.
The UK Government’s Shared Rural Network Programme was meant to address these issues. Instead, however, of forcing the mobile operators to share telecommunications masts, the UK Government left it to the big four to decide how to eliminate the hundreds of “partial not spots” around local communities. This has resulted in proposals to erect yet more phone masts around local communities by operators unwilling to co-operate, even in places like national parks where the landscape is supposed to be protected.
Meantime the UK
Government decided to pay these same mobile phone operators £500 million to eliminate “total not spots”, areas where there is no existing 4G coverage. Most of the total not spots, as Vicky Allan described two months ago (“Highland phone masts will cost millions. Will anyone benefit?”, The Herald, February 25), lie within Wild Land Areas. These are valued by rural communities and visitors alike precisely because they lack human infrastructure. For those who need it for safety or other purposes, communication in Wild Land Areas is now readily available and more reliably provided through satellite technology.
The UK Minister for Science, Innovation and Technology,
Julia Lopez, is responsible both for the transfer of landlines to Voice over Internet Protocol technology and the Shared Rural mobile network. She would be far better using part of the £500 million the UK Government is wasting on eliminating total not spots in creating a reliable telecommunications network for the rural areas where the vast