O2, Three and Vodafone agree new deal to enhance rural coverage
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Faye Sutton
| 28 January 2021
O2, Three and Vodafone are to jointly build and share 222 new mobile masts to boost rural coverage across the UK and deliver the first stage of the government’s Shared Rural Network scheme.

mobileAs part of the agreement 124 new sites will be built in Scotland, 33 in Wales, 11 in Northern Ireland, and 54 in England, with each operator leading on 74 of the new sites. The construction of the new masts will start this year and is scheduled to be completed by 2024 in line with the agreement reached with the UK Government and Ofcom.

The Shared Rural Network is a £1bn programme to improve rural mobile coverage and was agreed by the mobile network operators, UK government and Ofcom in March 2020. The new investment by O2, Three and Vodafone will extend the proportion of UK landmass where all mobile networks provide 4G services from 67% to 84% and aims to virtually eliminate Partial Not Spots (PNSs) – areas where at least one, but not all four of the UK’s mobile networks provide 4G coverage.

The move was hailed by Matt Warman, the UK governement's Minister for Digital Infrastructure. “I’m delighted to see major progress being made to banish ‘not spots’ of poor or patchy mobile coverage," he remaked. "This new infrastructure will unlock the potential of rural communities in all four nations and offer greater choice of fast and reliable 4G services. As part of this new Shared Rural Network the government is also investing half a billion pounds on new masts in areas without any signal at all meaning no one is left behind.”