MOBILE PHONE companies should not be given licenced access to urban markets til they have first properly served rural areas.
According to Berwickshire SNP MP, Calum Kerr, a system of 'out to in' mobile service licencing has already produced good signal coverage throughout the German countryside, and is one of the "bold initiatives" that the UK government could now take up to improve rural connectivity.
Poor mobile signal in Scotland's rural areas was highlighted by last week's OpenSignal "State of Mobile Networks: UK" report, which found that Scottish mobile users can only access 4G signal 50.4% of the time.
The report, produced alongside consumers rights charity Which?, also found that Scotland sees average download speeds of 21.1Mbps, placing it eighth out of the 12 UK regions reviewed. London tops the list of 4G statistics, with 69.7% access, while Northern Ireland has the best download speed at 23.3Mbps.
The report also reviewed the coverage performance of the four major mobile providers in Scotland – EE (55.06%), O2 (54.68%) and Vodafone (56.19%), all provide similar connection levels to their networks, but the company Three, emerged as the loser, with their customers in Scotland only able to access 4G signal on average 33.52% of the time.
Mr Kerr, who previously worked in the telecommunications sector, has been appointed as the leader of developing solutions to the challenge of rural connectivity as part of the Scottish Government's aim to provide improved digital infrastructure, by 2021.
"This is an eminently fixable problem if we just come at it from the right angle," he said. "The reason that we are suffering and struggling in so much of rural Scotland is because successive Westminster governments have seen the licensing of mobile spectrum as a cash cow and a way of making money rather than as critical infrastructure and something that is essential for our country.
""If other countries can mandate 99% population coverage indoors, let’s do that," he said. "In Germany they have an 'out to in' strategy, so mobile operators must cover rural areas first before they go into urban areas. These are commercial companies who cover rural areas first because they want to get into the high density areas.
"I want the UK Government to follow this example and implement a rural first policy for future licenses."
Mr Kerr will sit on the committee for the Digital Economy Bill, a new introduction by ScotGov, which convenes this week. This bill will be used to make the case for a change to spectrum policy to government as legislation moves forward.