This podcast focuses on the challenge of building, maintaining and upgrading the UK’s vital mobile telecommunications network. 

It is a bizarre reality that we are now used to having highspeed internet connectivity beaming into our devices at all times. To the extent that any loss of connectivity ranges from being hugely annoying to business critical.

The good news is that, having identified the need to provide universal coverage as a key priority in its 2018 Needs Assessment, the National Infrastructure Commission now describes this sector as one its success stories int terms of positive investment activity five years later. 

According to its latest progress update, the UK’s 4G coverage now extends to around 92% of the landmass. The Shared Rural Network agreement should increase this to 95% by the end of 2025, and it adds, “further coverage improvements in the harder to reach areas continuing until the start of 2027”.

Great progress indeed. Not least given that 5G networks are also being extended across the UK, and coverage now stands at around 70%. As the government puts it in their recently published Wireless Infrastructure Strategy, “the ambition for the majority of the population to have access to a 5G signal by 2027, has been achieved five years early.”

So we are not out of the 5G connectivity dark woods quite yet. According it its research the NIC reports that “challenges remain on upgrading mobile coverage on the rail network and securing investment for deploying new 5G networks”.

As the Government’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy, explains, the long term commercial and strategic value of 5G is yet to be fully understood. In short, the commercial viability of full 5G coverage beyond cities and urban centres will be determined by whether it becomes more than just a faster version of 4G, and whether it provides solutions to pressing problems – enabling 5G to deliver the promised productivity benefits of £159 billion by 2035.

So what is going on. Is 5G and a high speed mobile future likely to be universal across the UK limited to those in cities who are able and willing to pay. Well to find out, it is my pleasure to welcome Belinda Fawcett, Director of Property & Estates and General Counsel at Cornerstone, one of the businesses now wrestling with the challenge of rolling out the UK’s communications networks and simultaneous making the commercial case for investment.

Resources
Cornerstone Networks website
Wireless Infrastructure Strategy
The Shared Rural Network agreement
NIC 2018 Needs Assessment
NIC 2023 Progress report
Digital Economy Act 2017