Ministers must act to end mobile signal “not spots” that mean some overseas visitors have better phone reception than people using UK networks, a cross-party group of almost 90 MPs said.
The British Infrastructure Group (BIG), led by former Conservative chairman and minister Grant Shapps, said the time for excuses from the mobile network providers was over.
In a report, the MPs said it was “unacceptable that areas in Britain continue to have such poor mobile connectivity, and that overseas visitors can expect better mobile coverage than Britons stuck with a single provider”.
They wrote: “The time for excuses from the mobile sector is over. The government must make a better call for Britain and bring national mobile coverage policy into the 21st century.” They said many overseas visitors had better coverage because their networks allowed national roaming.
The group proposed an amendment to the government’s digital economy bill to allow Ofcom to fine mobile operators that did not meet the targets of a 2014 agreement. That deal gave the four large network operators (MNOs) another chance to fix mobile “not spots” after they said they would pump £5bn into improving coverage across the UK by December 2017 in return for the government not pursuing a system of national roaming.
BIG said it found little evidence to suggest that the mobile sector would meet the targets of this agreement to provide coverage to 90% of the UK’s geographic area, and called for a progress update to be published by the end of 2016.“Essentially, if you have a foreign SIM card and you are using it in the UK you will get better coverage than if you were using one of the companies here. It’s amazing,” said Shapps.
The MPs also called for customers to be able to terminate their mobile agreements without penalty if their operator is not giving them a good enough standard of coverage in their area.