UK government boasts about 4G upgrades at rural tourist hotspots

Areas targeted include Snowdonia, the Shropshire Hills, the Wye Valley, and the Brecon Beacons, as well as the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape and Caldicot Castle and Country Park in South Wales.

Residents and visitors who previously ‘struggled to fulfil basic tasks on their mobiles’, such as use map software, text or make calls, will no longer suffer dropouts in the areas, says the government.

The connectivity boost also comes with the usual promise of boosting the local economy, as well as reducing the risks of tourists needing emergency assistance, easing pressures on the emergency services, we’re told.

“Teams across the country are seeing a year-on-year increased demand for our unpaid, voluntary services,” said Mike Park, Senior Executive Officer at Mountain Rescue England and Wales. “This announcement means that we are being given the best chance to be alerted when people require our life-saving services.

“Thirty years ago, when mobile phones and network coverage were in their infancy, it was typical that simply getting off the mountain to a telephone to alert Mountain Rescue could add more than 2 hours before a rescue could be initiated. Because of the improvement in the mobile phone networks in these remote areas, mountain rescue teams are now able to be alerted so much quicker, which is a benefit to all of us – casualty and rescuer.”

Bryn Jones, Director of SRN at Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited which represents the four major UK operators, added: "With 16 publicly funded mobile sites now live, residents, businesses and tourists across the UK are benefitting from the sharing of existing infrastructure. The Shared Rural Network will continue to deliver improved 4G coverage as more upgrades go live." 

The project is part of the Shared Rural Network programme, designed to improve connectivity in rural areas of the UK. This bit involved upgrades to existing masts, rather than building new ones, ‘so that the impact on the surrounding environment is kept to a minimum,’ – a matter which the government has also laid into recently.  

To date the project has led to an additional 14,800 square kilometres – described as an area roughly the size of Northern Ireland or two million football pitches – receiving coverage from all four operators, says the release.

In other remote areas getting better connectivity news, Telent has today announced that it has helped to hook up 163 remote radio sites across 11,000 miles of UK coastline with full fibre, which will help the Coastguard’s emergency response efforts. 

The private broadband network is apparently one of the largest in the UK – the1,220km of new infrastructure stretches from the Shetland Islands to the Isles of Scilly.
Lee-on-the-Solent, Crystal Palace, Humber, Bridlington and Brighton Marina were among the first sites plugged into the new search and rescue radio network.

The new network promises to provide greater bandwidth and security, enhanced performance and improved reliability.

“The reliable digital connection and the improved resilience provided by the new network will aid HM Coastguard’s life-saving search and rescue operations for years to come with Telent on hand to provide its critical expertise,” said Telent CEO Jo Gretton. “Having first begun working together in 2010, maintaining radio equipment at the remote radio sites and delivering additional support services, Telent and MCA’s relationship has moved from strength to strength.”