UK government switches on a mobile mastUK government switches on a mobile mast

Well, sort of. The mast in question forms part of the UK's ongoing Shared Rural Network (SRN) programme and has actually been opened up for use by customers of Virgin Media O2, Vodafone and Three UK, having previously been reserved for EE users and the emergency services.

And the government's glee stems from the fact that this mast is the 30th of its kind funded by the state under the programme, which is worthy of note.

In one respect, it's a slightly underwhelming statistic. 30 masts in the almost five years since the SRN deal was signed almost five years ago does not seem like a huge amount, particularly given that those masts were already in existence or being built by EE as part of the UK's Emergency Services Network (ESN) and just needed an upgrade.

Nonetheless, the masts funded by the government do mean better mobile coverage and more choice for underserved parts of the UK, and that's not to be sneered at. As it stands, there are 21 such masts in Wales, five in Scotland, and – now the latest in the North York Moors National Park is up and running – four in England.

Specifically, the state is ploughing £184 million into the upgrade of the so-called Extended Area Service (EAS) masts to provide coverage from all four mobile operators. Overall, the SRN is a £1 billion-plus project, with the telcos committed to investment of £532 million and the state £501 million.

We're not privy to the details of the coverage area of the 30 masts switched up to date, but Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited (DMSL), which represents the mobile operators, notes that the SRN has extended 4G coverage by all four operators to an additional 11,000 square kilometres since its March 2020 inception.

Overall, mobile coverage by all four operators has increased by 34,000 square kilometres over the same timeframe, which is apparently roughly double the size of Northern Ireland, or 4.6 million football pitches. That's more than double the figure we were given last summer.

Sadly, the various stakeholders did not quantify the aims of the project in terms of football pitches or Northern Irelands, so it's tricky to judge how far along they are in their journey to providing mobile broadband coverage to 95% of the UK. But clearly progress is being made.

The SRN aims to extend four-player mobile coverage to 280,000 UK premises that did not have it prior to the programme, and 16,000 km of roads.

The mobile operators, with the exception of EE, had a bit of trouble meeting their coverage targets under the scheme set for mid-2024, but managed to turn things around. Last September Ofcom announced that Three, the one outlier, had met its various coverage obligations and effectively signed off on the year's targets.

There is clearly still work to do though before the SRN can claim to have had its desired effect.