Hull-based broadband ISP and network operator KCOM, which is operates its own Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network across East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in England, has warned customers to be on the lookout for a new phishing email that attempts to impersonate the company in order to commit fraud.

The fraudulent use of a legitimate / trustworthy business image (phishing) is typically designed to fool users into entering their personal, financial or other private information. This data is then stolen and abused for the fraudsters own gain. Such attacks usually take the form of emails or similar online messages that appear to come from official sources, but in reality are fakes. Most redirect you to a false website or software for illegally collecting your data or injecting your device with malware.

According to KCOM, the latest phishing email was sent to some of its customers regarding “not using your account in weeks“. The scam email then asks recipients to click a link before requesting their personal information and, naturally, you should NEVER click such links.

However, such emails can often be so well crafted that they risk tricking all but the most experienced of internet users, particularly those using a Smartphone, where it’s often much more tedious to give the email content a closer inspection (e.g. checking the link without clicking and looking at the source code to see if the email was sent by a legitimate KCOM domain / contact / server).

A KCOM spokesperson said:

“We would urge customers to be wary of any suspicious emails arriving in their inbox. Although it is not unusual to see so called “phishing” attempts – where fraudsters try to gain people’s personal details – we have seen an above normal number of attempts within the last 24 hours.

Our advice is always ‘if in doubt, delete’ and never click on a suspicious link. We advise customers who have already clicked on the link to change their password immediately. We will never ask you for personal information, such as bank details, via email.”

Sadly, customers of broadband and mobile operators are targeted like this all the time, although the same also happens with popular internet subscription services (Netflix, Amazon etc.), delivery companies, HMRC and so forth. As we say, the best phishing attempts can be very convincing and may even use personal data that has, in the past, been stolen from you or extracted via other sources. Suffice to say that when it comes to online security and privacy, a little paranoia and an abundance of caution is usually a good thing.

For further support and information about scam calls and emails, visit www.actionfraud.police.uk.

The Horsham-based Telecom Acquisitions (TAL Group), which is a holding company for several familiar UK ISP brands (Home Telecom, Fleur, No One and Eclipse Broadband etc.), has become the latest to join Freedom Fibre‘s new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network.

Until recently, Freedom Fibre’s network was only accessible to consumers and businesses via packages from UK ISP TalkTalk, although over the past few months they’ve added the Fusion Fibre Group, Squirrel Internet, Octaplus, MTH Networks and Yayzi etc. The addition of the TAL Group will further expand that reach.

“I’m proud to sell Freedom Fibre’s services,” said TAL CEO, Nigel Barnett. “Because of TAL’s industry leading position we deal with a lot of the Altnets, and find that a lot of companies are just rushing out a service to connect people as quickly as possible. But with Freedom Fibre, we’ve noticed that they’ve sort of held back and waited until they’ve got their package right.”

Freedom Fibre’s CEO, Neil McArthur, agreed: “As a wholesale provider of fibre services we know what we’re good at and we excel at it, but we need to build solid relationships with companies like TAL to maximise our distribution in different parts of the country.”

Edinburgh-based rural ISP and network builder GoFibre (BorderLink), which is deploying a 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to parts of North of England and the Scottish Borders, has revealed that over 10,000 premises across towns and villages in Angus can now access their network.

The provider is currently expecting their network to reach a total of c.120,000 UK premises during early 2024, and they’re currently live (Ready for Service) at 98,000 premises (homes and businesses) across more than 30 local areas.

The network expansion in Angus began in August 2023, when construction got underway in Montrose. When this phase is completed more than 15,500 households and businesses in total will be able to enjoy enhanced connectivity and network reliability across Angus.

Following four months of network build, another 1,500 homes and businesses in Forfar are now able to benefit too, which should reach 7,000 by the time build is completed in the autumn. These will join the 8,500 homes and businesses in the areas of Kirriemuir and Montrose that are already able to sign up.

In addition to expanding its network presence in Angus, the second round of funding for GoFibre’s GoFurther Fund has just closed, with local charities and community groups in Angus and Aberdeenshire invited to apply for this year’s funding round. With individual grants of up to £3,000 available to local groups, the successful recipients will be announced later this year.

Neil Conaghan, CEO of GoFibre, said:

“GoFibre is working hard to immerse ourselves in the local community here in Forfar and we’re totally committed to providing high quality, fast full fibre broadband and great customer service. Whilst building our network in Angus, our local teams have been talking to customers directly, listening to what they have to say. We’re also currently choosing the Angus-based projects that we will be supporting as part of the second round of our GoFurther Fund community initiative.

We are committed to including as many premises in our broadband network as possible while sustaining our support for the region. Achieving this milestone in our network’s expansion means that even more homes and businesses will gain access to the advantages of our full fibre connection, with plenty of further opportunities on the horizon.”

Customers of the new service can expect to pay from £36 per month (currently discounted to £29) for a 135Mbps (25Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £69 per month (currently discounted to £49) for their top 900Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).

UK ISP Vorboss, which is investing £300m to deploy a 100Gbps full fibre network (Ethernet and broadband) – dedicated to business – across central London, has today begun lobbying Ofcom to introduce automatic compensation for business networks in order to help “drive competition on quality and reliability” in the market.

The voluntary system (full summary), which was first introduced in 2019, typically requires member ISPs to compensate consumers (cash or bill credits) by £9.76 per day for delayed repairs following a loss of broadband (assuming it isn’t fixed within 2 working days). Missed appointments could also attract compensation of £30.49 and a delay to the start of a new service would be £6.10 per day.

However, Vorboss believes “now is the time to introduce a comparable scheme to protect UK businesses“, which they say reflects their own study into productivity (Assembly Research was commissioned to conduct this). The report claims that the UK economy has suffered a loss of £17.6bn in economic output over the past 12 months due to “connectivity outages“. The total for London was £5.7bn, representing just over 1% of London’s GDP.

Some 51% of businesses with a fixed business internet contract reported that they experienced at least one loss of service in the past year – that figure rises to 60% for London’s businesses (note: it’s unclear if this was due to a local network issue or ISP connection). Almost a fifth (19%) of businesses reported experiencing three or more outages in the past year – again, that figure increases in London, with 28% being hit three or more times.

Yet, 61% of businesses that experienced an outage did not receive any compensation. Of those that didn’t ask for it, the two most cited reasons were that requesting compensation was not worth the time and effort (44%) and they didn’t expect to get compensation (34%), even though many providers do offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) where compensation plays a role. But a lot of businesses seem to be unaware of this.

Tim Creswick, Founding CEO of Vorboss, said:

“As the data in this report shows, the productivity uplift that would come from improved network quality is massive.

We should all be incentivised to compete on quality – that would force an uplift in network performance, and in turn drive a much-needed economic boost.

Ofcom’s introduction of automatic compensation in the consumer market has been a success, pushing service providers to improve quality, while giving customers reassurance that compensation is real and tangible. If the scheme was extended to include businesses, we would see the same benefits, along with a significant productivity boost to London and the UK economy through reduced outages.”

However, it’s worth noting that Ofcom’s existing scheme does in fact cover some business ISP networks too, albeit specifically those that sell domestic grade fixed line broadband services. In other words, Vorboss seem to be seeking for the regulator’s rule to be extended into areas like Ethernet connectivity and leased lines, which should already be covered by SLAs. This is also an area where we’d expect larger businesses to have greater competency in their contract arrangements and network setup.

Not to mention that a competent business would know to ensure that they have access to good redundancy for when their main link fails, although some clearly do not. Suffice to say that we’re not quite as convinced as Vorboss that automatic compensation is strictly necessary for premium connections, which would also be a much more complex field for the regulator to set standardised pricing around. On the other hand, it is clear that some businesses with these types of connections could do with more support, particularly in terms of education around SLAs, availability of compensation and redundancy.

The real reason for this news is that Vorboss are today launching automatic compensation to new and existing business customers served by its network, across both direct and wholesale channels. If Vorboss business internet goes down for more than four minutes, customers will automatically be compensated with at least one day’s worth of “service credits“. If it is down for more than 24 hours, customers will receive the full pay-out of two months’ worth of service credits.

The Independent Networks Co-operative Association (INCA) and Point Topic have released their 2024 report into the impact of alternative “full fibre” (FTTP/B) gigabit broadband networks (AltNets), which reveals that their UK coverage grew by 57% in 2023 to top 12.9 million premises (up from 49% and 8.22m in 2022) and could reach 16.7m in 2024.

The coverage figures above are lower than in other reports (e.g. Ofcom’s Connected Nations 2023) because INCA’s study excludes Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) deployments from the two largest operators – Openreach (BT) and Virgin Media (VMO2) – in order to focus on independent AltNets like CityFibre, Netomnia, Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, CommunityFibre and many more (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds).

The new report finds that FTTP from AltNets now covers a total of 12.9m premises (ready for service), which they say is approximately 35% of all UK premises. Furthermore, some 3m of those were in places classed by Ofcom as “Area 3” (i.e. mostly harder to reach rural locations). Take-up also stands at 15% (2 million live connections), which is up from 1.5 million in the last year’s report, but the portion is down from 20% – this is somewhat expected, given the rapid pace of build.

However, it’s worth remembering that past reports also included a future forecast, which last year predicted that AltNets would be delivering coverage to 14.23m premises by the end of 2023. But today’s figure of 12.9m for that period falls a fair bit short of this target, which is sadly to be expected given how many network operators cut jobs and suffered a build slowdown during the latter half of 2023.

The latest forecast is for altnets to extend their coverage to reach 16.7m premises by the end of 2024, but we’re expecting 2024 to be another rocky year for a lot of operators and as such this figure should be taken with caution. Separately, it’s worth noting that, when overbuild is excluded, the new data means that 6.9 million premises “are only passed by Altnet fibre” (no Openreach or VM).

Build progress is overall positive, but the above clearly reflects the challenges that AltNets have faced in converting their build ambitions into reality in the current market. At this point everybody has felt some strain due to a combination of issues, such as rising costs (build, leases etc.), competition from rivals (e.g. overbuild, price discounts), the challenge of growing a viable level of take-up and the difficulty of securing fresh investment while interest rates remain high.

One possible caveat above is that there can be a tendency for some network operators to report technically unfinished or non-live builds (i.e. you can’t yet order a live service) as Ready for Service (RFS), which may cause complications when forecasting live coverage.

The Financial Impacts

According to INCA, investment and expenditure in the Altnet sector continued throughout 2023 with an estimated additional £7 billion having been committed to network expansions and operations during the year. INCA estimates that AltNets currently have an intended capital expenditure (CAPEX) – from 2024 until the end of 2028 – of over £13.4 billion, with operational expenditure of at least £1bn.

However, we should point out that aspirational funding commitments are subject to significant change, much like the builds themselves, and so should be taken with a pinch of salt. Some projects will fail or reduce, so we don’t expect all of this to be realised. In fact, 2023 was a good example of this, with quite a few operators putting a slowdown or pause on their build progress due to the wider economic pressures (accurately accounting for this is extremely difficult due to the lack of transparency from many operators).

However, taking this private sector investment together with the government’s £5 billion Project Gigabit commitment, as well as other planned full fibre investments (e.g. £4.5bn on VMO2’s Nexfibre project and £15bn on Openreach), quickly highlights just how much inward investment is still involved in the market. The vast majority of that is private funding, which is naturally taking a lot of the strain away from the public purse.

Finally, in terms of the issues that AltNets think are the most pressing to tackle, it’s worth looking back at last year’s report to see what the top concerns were during 2022. According to last year’s report, the top concerns were – 1) Planning and street works delays and/or costs, 2) Project Gigabit procurements, the tendering process, and threat of overbuild, and finally, 3) Overbuild by providers other than Openreach.

By comparison, the top concerns in this year’s (2023) report were – 1) Access to finance, 2) Switching between Openreach and independent networks e.g. through the One Touch Switching process, and, 3) Getting wayleaves. All of that makes perfect sense, given what has been said above and the many related developments seen during the year.

Overall, altnets continue to have a significant impact across the United Kingdom and that is set to continue for the foreseeable future, which is one of the reasons why major network operators are ramping-up their own builds (competition). But at the same time, we do expect to see a continuing level of consolidation on the market, particularly now that CityFibre and others seem to be going on the hunt.

Tim Stranack, INCA Chair, said:

“Even though INCA anticipates that Altnet network build will slow in 2024 it should still be possible to achieve the Government’s target of 85% Gigabit enabled properties by the end of 2025. The target of 99% properties Gigabit enabled by 2030 will be dependent on how successful Ofcom’s forthcoming Telecommunications Access Review is at reassuring and incentivising private investors to continue building the UK’s remaining full fibre network.

By the time of next year’s report we will have a new Government and Ofcom’s first market review consultation. Support from both parties will be needed if the UK’s vision of established and sustainable telecommunications competition which elevates the UK to the forefront of technological innovation is to be realised.”

Finally, the report includes its usual brief mention of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) providers, which in the small print are estimated to cover more than 2 million premises, although not all will have a full speed service available. The fixed wireless access (FWA) market is more difficult to assess due to line-of-sight issues and fragmented supply in the sector.

Shropshire-based UK ISP Aquiss has followed last week’s launch of their first packages based off CityFibre’s growing national Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which initially only offered speeds of up to 900Mbps, by today complementing them with the addition of plans based off the 1.2Gbps and 2.5Gbps tiers.

The first 1.2Gbps tier is actually promoted with an average median speed of 1Gbps (1000Mbps) for £45 per month on a 12-month term (discounted to £22.50 for the first 3 months), while their 2.5Gbps tier is promoted as simply 2Gbps and costs £56 per month (discounted to £28 for the first 3 months). The latter is similar to what a lot of other ISPs charge for 1Gbps, which makes it quite attractive.

As before, all packages include symmetric service speeds, unlimited usage, a 12-month minimum contract term, a pledge of no mid-contract price rises, free installation, a static IPv4 address and static IPv6 addresses (/56). But new customers are expected to supply their own broadband router, so you’ll need to make sure you select one that can handle 2.5Gbps LAN ports or faster, if you go for their 2Gbps plan.

News

Lycamobile, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) has publicly criticized T-Mobile.

Lycamobile is a London-based MVNO offering services in more than a dozen countries and serving over 16 million subscribers. Its US subsidiary offers mobile service over T-Mobile’s network. However, Lyca is now making its fight against T-Mobile very public.

Having entered the US market through an MVNO deal with T-Mobile in 2012, Lyca is now claiming that T-Mobile has failed to fairly abide by the terms of the agreement. In a filing with the FCC, Lyca wrote that it has “struggled over the past several years to obtain basic functionalities from T-Mobile, such as eSIM and access to T-Mobile’s 5G standalone architecture, and to get T-Mobile to fairly observe the terms of its MVNO agreement”.

In the filing, Lycamobile urged the FCC and the Department of Justice to block T-Mobile’s prospective acquisitions of Mint Mobile and Ultra Mobile.

In fact, Lyca suggests that “T-Mobile has been advantaging Ultra and Mint because of their intended acquisition of the companies while systematically disadvantaging Lyca, a close independent competitor”. Lyca wrote that if T-Mobile is allowed to acquire Mint and Ultra, “this anti-competitive behavior will only worsen” in an effort to eliminate competition for in-house MVNOs.

T-Mobile is fighting back, filing a motion to dismiss Lyca’s comments, arguing that Lyca’s complaints come nine months after the FCC’s comment deadline and are, therefore, irrelevant. According to T-Mobile, Lyca is seeking to insert an irrelevant private dispute into the FCC’s public interest review.

This is the latest battle in an ongoing war between Lyca and T-Mobile. In 2022, T-Mobile filed a lawsuit against Lyca, claiming that it accidentally undercharged the MVNO for access to its network for over a year. The billing discrepancy is reportedly due to problems with a third-party billing provider.

The lawsuit states that Lyca should have caught this mistake. However, Lyca claims that it renegotiated its MVNO agreement with T-Mobile in April 2022, based on T-Mobile’s data, which turned out to be faulty. The MVNO then concluded that its payments to T-Mobile would not increase while it added more customers.

Lyca “relied on the false information from T-Mobile to lower its prices to customers and expand its operations to grow its customers”, according to Lyca’s counterclaims. The subsequent scaling back of Lyca’s growth plans and changes to its customer plans has “substantially injured Lycamobile”, the company claims.

The counterclaims submitted by Lyca call the lawsuit a “smokescreen” hiding T-Mobile’s desire to hinder Lyca’s ability to compete with T-Mobile and, potentially, to force Lycamobile out of the US market. This reflects its claims now that T-Mobile is engaging in “anti-competitive” behavior.

T-Mobile had hoped to complete its proposed $1.35 billion acquisition of Mint Mobile in the first quarter of 2024. However, the deal has now been delayed twice as the FCC continues to evaluate the potential deal.

It remains to be seen whether Lyca’s recent complaints of anti-competitive actions will sway regulators to block the deal. Meanwhile, the stage is set for a further battle – the court case between Lycamobile and T-Mobile is set to go to trial in 2025.

News

The investment follows the company spending JPY20 billion ($129.2 million) on computing infrastructure last year 

Japanese tech giant SoftBank has announced that it will invest JPY 150 billion $960 billion to upgrade its computing infrastructure to deliver a Generative AI (gen AI) platform in the Japanese language, according to a report from Nikkei, which cited anonymous sources. 

Over the next two years, SoftBank will reportedly purchase GPUs (graphics processing units) from US based chip company Nvidia, using them to train and power its own large language models (LLMs), and then loan access to them to other firms. 

The investment in computing infrastructure is set to be the largest of any Japanese company, although SoftBank has not yet commented on the report. 

Last August, SoftBank invested JPY 150 million ($969 million) launched a new company, named ‘SB Institutions’, to research and develop homegrown LLMs that are specialised for the Japanese language. The company will ‘provide the necessary data sets and tools for LLM learning and develop models for reinforcement learning on SoftBank’s computing platform,” the press release reads. 

“By developing LLM specialized for the Japanese language, SB Intuitions can develop generative AI services tailored to the unique needs of Japan-based customers,” it continued. 

SB institutions is currently working on its own LLM, which is set to be completed this year. 

Keep up to date with the latest international telecoms news by subscribing to the Total Telecom daily newsletter  

Also in the news:
South Korea to invest $7 billion in AI semiconductors
Swisscom expands 5G partnership with Ericsson
Daisy Group set to acquire 4Com for £215m

Insight

Using her experience working in Venture Capital, Angel Investment and with startup businesses, Charlotte Scott, Senior Investor Relations Manager at Innovation SuperNetwork, works to improve the relationship between investors and businesses. 

Through her work in the Northern Investor Hub and on the Pathways to Funding North of Tyne and Tees Valley Securing Investment programmes, she builds bridges between businesses and investors, helping investors expand their portfolio, reach new opportunities, and connect with exciting businesses.  

Hear from Charlotte as she shares her key tips and advice on how to improve your business investor connectivity. 

Be Authentic. 

Transparency and authenticity are often missing when it comes to building long lasting investor business relationships. There’s a misconception that investors loom in the upper echelons of society. However, human stories will engage them, and authentic connections can be the basis of a very trusting and productive relationship.   

An investor will likely take a board seat in your business, so if you haven’t taken the time to build that trusting relationship where you can disclose key information, then they can’t help you make decisions and offer advice that could potentially save your company.  

Take the time to just get out there, network with investors and invest time nurturing those relationships. Treat them as humans and respect their time and opinions as you would anyone else. You’ve got to be able to have good communication and good interpersonal relationships. 

Expand and diversify your pool of connections. 

Working with start-ups in a variety of roles and regions has introduced me to a lot of underrepresented founders and communities that have – through no fault of their own – slipped through the access to funding net. And that was quite an eye opener. It was clear how much having access to business support could really transform their personal and professional situations.    

It’s generally acknowledged that we want to hang out with people who have similar interests. But if an investor is really committed to diversity and inclusion then they should be branching out, involving themselves with communities who are not from the same background, and welcome the diversity of opinion that comes with expanding our network beyond the familiar.   

Expanding your network allows you to come across such a range of people, ideas, and businesses. The nature of individuals operating businesses is that they’re ambitious and highly motivated – have a certain resilience and grit. It’s a wonderful thing to be surrounded by. 

Make sure your voice is heard. 

Get out there and start talking about yourself! If an investor needs to go to areas and break into communities who don’t look and sound like them, you’ve got to try and do the same.  

For example, put an event every week in your diary where you think investors might be and show up.  Don’t pitch in that informal environment but have a chat and start to build a positive relationship. That person will remember you as that interesting individual who they had a good chat with a couple of months ago, so they’ll be more receptive to start up a conversation and lend you a hand.   

Working with Innovation SuperNetwork. 

At Innovation SuperNetwork, we work with businesses access the finance they need, helping them to understand their options. 

We offer a programme of events, workshops, and one-to-one support to help you identify and apply for grants or loans. Our investor readiness programme steps in to make you pitch perfect and able to secure investment for growth.  

Through the Northern Investor Hub, we work closely with local and national partners, to bring experienced and budding investors together, identifying co-investment opportunities, and showcase the North’s most inspiring businesses. 

If you are an investor, find out more about the opportunities we can provide for you here.

The CEO of the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency, Dean Creamer, has told MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) that officials have rejected a request from several mobile operators to delay completion of the 4G roll-out for Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas under the £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project by 18-months.

The industry-led SRN – supported by £501m of public funding and £532m from operators – involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between O2 (Virgin Media), Vodafone, EE (BT) and Three UK. The goal is to extend geographic 4G coverage (aggregate) to 95% of the UK by the end of 2025 (84% when only considering the areas where you’ll be able to take 4G from all providers).

The programme includes two key targets. The first involves the delivery of industry funded coverage improvements in Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas (i.e. areas that receive coverage from at least one operator, but not all), which needs to be achieved by June 2024 – at this point 4G (mobile broadband) must cover 88% of the UK’s landmass. EE (BT) recently became the first operator to report having achieved the first target for PNS areas, although Ofcom has yet to confirm this.

The second target involves Total Not-Spot (TNS) areas by early 2027. Just to be clear, Ofcom’s licence obligations commit each individual operator to increase its 4G coverage to 88% of the UK’s landmass by June 2024 – rising to 90% by January 2027 – with these individual obligations supporting the overall target of 95% by December 2025.

However, during February 2024 the National Audit Office (NAO) confirmed (here) that Three UK, Vodafone and O2 were “each likely to miss their Ofcom licence obligation to provide 88% 4G coverage by June 2024” and had requested to “discuss an 18-month extension to the PNS element of the programme.” At present, this only impacts the PNS, not TNS target.

Government Rejects SRN Delays

The issue of a delay came up again yesterday during a formal oral evidence session of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on “supporting mobile connectivity” (here), which was attended by committee MPs, as well as Sarah Munby (Permanent Secretary at DSIT), Dean Creamer CBE (BDUK CEO) and Emran Mian CB OBE (Director General for Digital, Technology and Telecoms at DSIT).

The most interesting development from this session came from Dean Creamer, who in referencing the calls by O2, Vodafone and Three UK for a delay to the PNS target, said: “the [mobile operators] didn’t ask for 2 years [delay], they asked for 18 months. That wasn’t accepted, and we haven’t agreed that.” But the question of what they will agree to is more complex.

Creamer pointed out that it was ultimately Ofcom’s responsibility to take a view on whether the licence obligations have been met and what, if anything, they want to do about that. The regulator plans to run its progress assessment during the summer and will reach a conclusion a couple of months later, during the early autumn.

In theory, Ofcom could fine the operators up to 10% of their global turnover, if the roll-out is delayed. But in reality, the regulator is expected to be “reasonable” in their judgement. This is important because some of the delays come from external factors, such as rejected planning applications by local authorities, which are a politically tedious area.

Sarah Munby also made the crucial point that “it’s entirely possible of course for some of those 88% not to be met in June 2024, but to still be in good shape to hit the 95% target in December 2025″. Dean Creamer similarly noted that part of the reason for setting the ultimate SRN completion date in 2027 is to allow some contingency for the inevitable complexities and delays that often flow from mobile infrastructure projects (much as we’ve seen many times before).

Finding suitable sites, securing the necessary permissions through the planning system, obtaining power supply and fibre backhaul – particularly in remote rural areas, are all known bugbears.

Both O2 (VMO2) and Vodafone have issued statements today that reaffirm their “commitment” to the SRN, while Three UK has opted not to comment.

A spokesman for DSIT said:

“Mobile network operators are responsible for delivering the first part of the Shared Rural Network and legally bound to reach 88% geographic coverage by June 2024. The Shared Rural Network has already delivered substantial improvements to mobile coverage across the UK with 4G geographic coverage now at 93.2pc.”

As above, DSIT launched the SRN in March 2020, which has so far led – at least in part (commercial upgrades have played a role too) – to 4G mobile coverage increasing from 91.4% in 2020 to 92.7% in 2023 and the latest data puts it at 93.2% (Feb 2024), against the target of 95% by 2025.

At this point, it’s worth reminding readers that the SRN isn’t the only mobile coverage target to consider. The Government’s Wireless Infrastructure Strategy (WIS) also set an ambition for “all populated areas to be covered by ‘standalone’ 5G (5G-plus) by 2030” (here). But the use of terms like “all populated areas” doesn’t really make for the clearest of targets, and we’d have preferred to see one based around geographic coverage.