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Mobe not-spots 'landmark deal'? We ain't thick, Javid

Coverage increase promise is (mostly) cobblers

Just £40 per subscriber, per year

The headline figure is that the four networks will spend £5bn over the next two years on improving mobile coverage. It’s a big number, a very, very big number, nearly £5,000 a minute for two years. But it can be seen in other ways - it’s about £40 per subscriber per year. In fact, it’s less than the networks would be spending anyway.

Indeed, in its response to the announcement Vodafone said it had was "spending £1bn on our network and services in the UK this year alone and will continue to spend a similar amount next year as well". So, the commitment to government is less than Vodafone was spending anyway. Suddenly the "Landmark Deal" looks a bit hollow.

Perhaps the only impressive line in the statement is “full coverage from all four mobile operators will increase from 69 per cent to 85 per cent of geographic areas by 2017”, although the devil in the detail is what is meant by “full coverage”

The DCMS told us that "current mobile market conditions have made long-term investment less certain. This agreement commits them to going further. As part of the agreement, MNOs have drawn up proposals that clearly go beyond planned coverage, and include both new sites and increased infrastructure sharing."

Looking further at the release it promises "guaranteed voice and text coverage from each operator across 90 per cent of the UK geographic area by 2017, halving the areas currently blighted by patchy coverage as a result of partial 'not-spots'".

Given the network sharing which is rolling out, with O2 and Vodafone sharing sites, as are EE and Three, the reduction of partial not spots is less challenging than it might at first seem. If only one network has coverage, its partner can easily get access. Adding the other two is more difficult but will be driven by the loss of revenue to rivals.

Perhaps the only line in the statement which is impressive is the one which says "full coverage from all four mobile operators will increase from 69 per cent to 85 per cent of geographic areas by 2017".

Given the network sharing rolling out,

with O2 and Vodafone sharing sites, as are

EE and Three, the reduction of partial not

spots is less challenging than it might at first seem

Adding 16 per cent might not sound that much but it's geographic and incremental which means covering a lot of low-value space - all the easy areas having already been done. The devil in the detail is what is meant by "full coverage". Is that voice-only where 900MHz 2G will do the job? Or, is that indoor coverage? 70 per cent of calls are made indoor and mobile data usage is even higher.

The next clause hints at what might be by saying that operators have agreed to "provide reliable signal strength for voice for each type of mobile service (whether 2G/3G/4G) - currently, many consumers frequently lose signal or cannot get signal long enough to make a call".

But when we asked for clarification on the point that operators will be held to supporting the individual technologies, we were told that "it will be up to MNOs how they choose to deliver their coverage obligation. The agreement is not specific about the technology they should use to achieve this", and anyway, asking for obligations on 4G voice is nonsensical.

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