UK telcos not too enthused over national roaming

London: Plans to improve patchy mobile coverage across Britain through “national roaming” have been criticised by industry and political figures but all agree that more can be done to improve services. Mobile coverage reaches more than 98 per cent of premises but about a fifth of the country is without a signal from all four operators.

Under the terms of existing mobile licences, 90 per cent of UK homes need to be covered by 3G and an operator is obliged to cover 98 per cent of the UK with 4G. However, the coverage does not overlap precisely, creating areas where only one or two networks provide a signal.

Operators erect masts where there is a commercial reason to do so — not where there are no or few customers. Planning restrictions also hamper mobile coverage, with the industry seeking help from the government to make it easier to build bigger masts capable of carrying signals further.

But Sajid Javid, UK culture secretary, is also considering allowing customers of one network to “roam” on to another — in effect sharing networks to help customers find a signal. His proposals do not target the places where there is no reception, so-called not spots, but instead the 20 per cent of the UK where there may be a signal from one or two operators but not all.

However, as simple as national roaming sounds, technical and legal problems have been raised. Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom, the communications regulator, has said he shared some of the operators’ concerns about the impact on competition and investment. However, national roaming was technically and commercially feasible, he said, even if there were “things we need to work through”.

Mobile phone groups are, however, united against the concept of national roaming. Vodafone insisted that roaming would make coverage and quality “significantly worse from the customer’s perspective, with a much higher risk of dropped calls, lower battery life and negative impact on services such as voicemail”.

The government wants to instigate a similar process to international roaming but operators argue that the number of customers that could use rival networks under national roaming could cause them to collapse.

There is also a threat of legal action. The mobile groups point out that they spent billions buying 3G and 4G licences on the basis of existing regulations founded on the principle of competing networks. “National roaming would also harm the business case for further investment in rural coverage,” Vodafone said.

EE said the “flawed concept” of national roaming would “deteriorate network reliability for tens of millions across the UK.

“We’re keenly aware that there are some parts of the UK where customers still can’t get adequate signal levels,” said EE, which operates the Orange and T-Mobile brands. “While we’re already working on some significant nationwide coverage improvement plans, we also need government to work more closely with the industry to remove the barriers to efficiently building more signal in more places.”

— Financial Times