Tim Farron – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tim Farron on 2016-09-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that the emergency services can be contacted in areas where mobile phone service is poor or non-existent.

Matt Hancock

Improving mobile connectivity across the UK, including in rural and hard to reach areas, is a priority for the Government and the December 2014 landmark agreement with industry guarantees that each mobile network operator will provide voice and SMS text coverage to 90% of the UK’s landmass by end 2017. Additionally, Telefonica has a licence obligation to deliver indoor 4G coverage to 98% of UK premises, also by end 2017. Taken together these obligations will cut complete not spots by two thirds, resulting in 98% of the UK landmass with mobile coverage.

This coverage would be available to all mobile phone users for emergency 999 calls as the Code of Practice for the Public Emergency Call Service requires that a caller from a mobile phone is able to roam onto another mobile network to make an emergency call if they have no signal from their own provider.

Furthermore, the Government recognises the importance of public call boxes as a means of calling the emergency services. Ofcom requires that there is a period of consultation before a public call box is removed and that one of the factors to be considered by the relevant public body is the potential importance of the call box to contact the emergency services.