Landmark deal agreed to improve UK mobile coverage

Under the 'shared rural network' arrangements, EE, O2, Three and Vodafone and the government will co-invest in addressing both full and partial 'not spots'. These are areas of the country where none, or only some, of the operators offer existing mobile coverage.

The operators' investment, of £532m collectively, will "close almost all" partial 'not spots'. This will be achieved through mast-sharing, where operators will be able to use existing infrastructure to install their own telecoms equipment, extending their mobile coverage into those areas.

More than £500m of government money will be used by the MNOs to install digital infrastructure in areas of the UK which up until now not been commercially viable for the operators to invest in.

Digital Mobile Spectrum Limited, a company owned in equal shares by the four MNOs, will deliver the project that had been provisionally agreed upon last year.

Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law, advised the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) on the initiative, including on the funding agreement and a range of legal and regulatory aspects of the deal.

"It is a real positive outcome for the country seeing the government work closely with the mobile operators to determine an innovative, industry-led solution to the challenge of total and partial 'not spots' in mobile coverage in the UK," said technology contracts expert Simon Colvin of Pinsent Masons.

The MNOs are subject to legally binding coverage commitments under the new agreement, which telecoms regulator Ofcom has the power to enforce. The government said that the four MNOs will deliver 95% combined coverage across the whole of the UK by the end of 2025.

According to the government, the biggest coverage improvements are expected to be delivered in rural parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – in Scotland alone, 91% of the country will have mobile coverage from at least one operator by the end of the project compared with 80% currently, while full coverage from all four operators will rise from spanning 42% of Scotland to 74%, it said.