Luciana Berger – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Luciana Berger on 2016-07-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he has taken to improve mobile telephone coverage in the Liverpool City Region.

Mr Edward Vaizey

Improving mobile coverage remains a priority for the Government, and our landmark agreement in December 2014 with the four mobile network operators (MNOs) for each to provide voice and SMS text coverage to at least 90% of the UK landmass by 2017 will significantly improve coverage in the UK, including the Liverpool City Region. The additional licence obligation on Telefonica, which the other MNOs have publicly stated they will match, will deliver significant improvements in 4G coverage – covering 98% of UK premises by the end of 2017.

In support of this work, the Government is also reforming mobile planning laws (in England only) and the Electronic Communications Code to make it cheaper and quicker for industry to invest and deliver coverage improvements.