One of my priorities for Richmondshire and Hambleton is making sure that we have good mobile phone coverage: it helps people stay in touch, makes the area more business friendly, and is essential for keeping people safe. 20% of people in the UK have poor or partial mobile phone coverage and what is worse, in North Yorkshire this figure is as high as 28%. This absolutely has to change.
This is why I welcome today’s announcement from the Government that a further £5 billion is being invested in the UK’s mobile infrastructure. The Government has secured a legally binding agreement with the mobile networks EE, O2, Three and Vodafone to tackle poor signal issues in so-called ‘partial not-spots’. By 2017 the aim is to half the number of partial no-coverage areas, before pushing on to eventually achieve full coverage. It may not be job done, but it certainly shows some excellent progress in getting people connected.
If this new program is not sufficient to get us the coverage we need, if elected I will campaign for a ‘National Roaming Bill’. Currently, in order to get mobile phone signal, your phone needs to connect to a mast owned by your phone operator. Under a bill that allowed ‘roaming’, phones could pick up their signal from the nearest mast – even if owned by a rival operator. This is what happens already whenever we go on holiday to somewhere like France and is clearly very effective. The result would be better and stronger signal across more of the county, and making a lot of people’s lives in North Yorkshire a lot more convenient.