The PM was in rural Oxfordshire over Christmas and decided that “something must be done” about rural mobile coverage. But the proposed cure is an odd one – closer to proposals floated by teenage socialist firebrand Owen Jones – to nationalise the country’s mobile infrastructure than a traditional incentive-based policy.
Mobile coverage reaches 98 per cent of the population – but around a fifth of the landmass is without a signal. Some of the operator’s own estimates put the cost of bridging the gap between £2bn and £4bn – and there aren’t enough people in those rural notspots to justify the investment.
No.10’s preferred solution isn’t better infrastructure, but giving consumers the ability to roam from network to network. The PM gave the plan to Maria Miller at the Ministry of Fun, who decided it was a rum idea. But after Miller resigned in April, her successor, ambitious business minister Sajid Javid, threw his weight behind the plan. Last night, a draft consultation went out to Britain’s big four: EE, Vodafone, Telefonica-owned O2 and Hutchinson’s 3.
The operators' objections to National Roaming broadly fall into three categories. It would create practical difficulties, they argue; it “contradicts 30 years of policy” (as one told me yesterday); and ultimately it will kill off long-term investment in rural infrastructure.
We all fall down
Leading the first set of issues is resilience: what happens when one network goes down – and everyone switches to another network? If rural mobile infrastructure is so poor that one network can’t cope with its own subscriber base – how well will it cope with two? And ultimately – with four? In the event of a single network failing, a domino effect is likely, operators say, as the entire rural subscriber base attaches at once. And this has serious repercussions, given the reliance of vital services on mobile coverage. Hence today’s briefings from the Home Office that National Roaming puts state security at risk.There are other technical objections, too. Operators don’t support in-call handover between networks: so even a National Roaming experience is likely to be an unhappy one for the user if they’re on the move. And phones would need to be reprogrammed to search more aggressively for a higher priority network – every few minutes rather than 3GPP default of every hour – resulting in much faster battery drain. (See 3.2.2.5 in the spec
Who's calling us bumpkins?
Another pressing question is “what defines rural?” When the policy framework was established 25 years ago, lower frequency spectrum gave better coverage indoors. Today, high frequency spectrum is now used alongside it, so many users discover “notspots” in their own homes. If bumpkins can switch to another network, why can’t everyone else? Confining National Roaming to rural areas discriminates against the urban users who actually fund the network.referensi : http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/11/05/national_roaming_parklife/
