Ofcom

Julie Minns Excerpts

Thursday 29th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Vikki Slade]

I will share a similar tale of the failure to sort out a problem. In August, the village of Bloxworth, which has only about 80 houses and has poor mobile signal, no bus and no shop, was cut off completely when a tree took down their BT Openreach infrastructure. Despite allegedly having a 48-hour service standard, the repair took more than a week to complete. Residents were not even contacted and were later told that they should have been contacted by their individual provider, which is ridiculous. When the water goes down, the water board is responsible and when the electric goes down, it is the infrastructure provider—Scottish and Southern Energy in our area—that is responsible, not OVO or Octopus or whoever provides the electricity. In a data age, with resilience being much of the Government’s focus, it is utterly ridiculous that the main provider of infrastructure is allowed to pass on the responsibility and not communicate. It is somewhat ironic that when the communication goes down, there is radio silence.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point about villages. In my constituency, a number of villages do not have a shop or a bus, and so on, but they did have the public switched telephone network. Ofcom has overseen the switch-off of that old copper network infrastructure, but it has not placed an obligation on Openreach to communicate with the people who are losing their telephony. Does she agree that it is not too late in the day for Ofcom to put Openreach on the hook for communicating with people who are about to lose their copper network?

[Vikki Slade]

I am glad that the hon. Lady intervened because that is apparently the root of the problem with my church. BT Openreach sent out an installer who was able to deal only with copper, but that is all being turned off in January, so he went away again. They came back and said, “You need someone with fibre,” and then they came back and said, “Oh, the pole’s not good enough. You need to replace the pole, but you have to pay for it.” The requirement to have fibre is because of the BT Openreach plan to turn off the PSTN and go on to the Voice over Internet Protocol, yet BT Openreach demands that the customers pay the costs because it has not prepared for that. You could not make it up.

Are we still on track to turn the PSTN off in January, and what consideration has been given to those people who are still on the emergency systems? What will be done to make sure that BT Openreach is not passing on unfair costs to people who did not ask for that change in the first place? On resilience, what are the Minister and her team doing with Ofcom to ensure that the issue of communication is included in the plan for national resilience, and how is Ofcom holding the telephone companies to account when they pass on the costs?

I could not possibly complete a debate about Ofcom without mentioning the post. I am aware that there have been two recent debates on the subject and I would be here for as long as it takes my residents to get their post if I shared every story with the Minister, but I must repeat the comments made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) at the end of Monday’s debate. As chair of the Business, Innovation, Science and Trade Committee, he talked about giving Ofcom until November to show that it is improving its performance.

My residents tell me time and again about the length of time between their deliveries and how, miraculously, when someone on their street goes down to the delivery office to challenge the missing mail, bundles turn up in elastic bands. It is simply not credible that they all turned up on that very day. When I write to Royal Mail about this, I, and I am sure hon. Members alike, get a templated reply that basically feels like gaslighting. It never answers the question. I know, because I have spent a couple of shifts down at the sorting office, that local sorting offices have to tell their regional offices which frames did not get delivered. They have to report when vehicles break down or staff do not turn up for shifts. Royal Mail has the data about why that post is not being delivered; it just chooses not to share it with us or its customers. My question is, is it sharing it with Ofcom?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond, I think for the second time this week. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Vikki Slade) for securing this important debate. She made a critical point in her final remarks about the effectiveness of Ofcom and whether we are overdue a review. It is 26 years since Ofcom was set up, and the changes in modern communication that we have seen in that time have been profound. It is a very valid point.

Before entering Parliament, I worked in mobile telecommunications for 13 years. During that time, I saw how Government policy and regulatory frameworks shape competition, investment and consumer choices and outcomes. One lesson that I took from that experience is that spectrum policy matters enormously. Spectrum is not simply a technical issue for regulators. It is one of the most powerful tools available to support competition, investment and innovation in mobile.

Back in 2000—I am that old—the UK’s 3G spectrum auction demonstrated that point very clearly. Competition sat at the heart of the then Labour Government’s policy. The result was a highly competitive mobile 3G market that encouraged substantial investment in infrastructure, rapid innovation and major benefits for consumers. Over time, and I am afraid to say particularly due to the decisions taken in the early 2010s by Conservative Ministers, that competitive landscape shifted. Spectrum holdings that were held for the use of mobile data became increasingly less equal, and the opportunities to strengthen genuine infrastructure competition were missed. As a result, some of the benefits that came from a competitive 3G market were lost.

Much is said about competition in telecommunications, and rightly so. Consumers can choose from a wide range of broadband and mobile providers. That competition helps drive innovation, service quality and value for money. However, we should not confuse retail competition with infrastructure competition. True competition depends not only on the number of brands selling services, but on competition between the networks that underpin those services. Without effective infrastructure competition, consumers might appear to have plenty of choice, but what they do not have is plenty of coverage—certainly not in rural areas such as my constituency.

Spectrum sits at the heart of that challenge. It is a finite national asset, on which every mobile call, message and wireless data connection depends, and the way it is allocated has a profound impact on investment coverage and long-term market structure. Ofcom, therefore, has a critical responsibility to ensure that spectrum policy promotes genuine competition, supports investment and delivers benefits to consumers in every part of the country, including rural and hard-to-reach communities. Spectrum policy should strengthen rather than simply reinforce the position of the operators that already hold significant advantages in low-frequency spectrum in particular, which is critical for delivering rural and indoor coverage.

However, I do not believe that responsibility rests solely with Ofcom. Spectrum is one of the most valuable public assets this country possesses. Decisions about how it is used shape competition, investment, innovation and coverage for decades. Those decisions should be informed by a clear national strategy set by Government. We have long-term strategies for transport, energy and digital infrastructure. There is a strong case for a clear, long-term spectrum strategy that sets out how spectrum allocation will support economic growth, innovation, network resilience and genuine infrastructure competition.

Infrastructure competition is not, on its own, enough. We must also look at the resilience of our mobile networks, because mobile connectivity is now an essential service. People rely on it to access banking, public services, transport information, employment and emergency assistance. Businesses rely on it to operate, communicate and serve their customers. When networks fail, the consequences are no longer merely inconvenient. Outages can disrupt livelihoods, affect public confidence and leave people unable to access services on which they depend. That makes Ofcom’s work on network resilience critical. Mobile operators must be expected to maintain robust infrastructure, communicate clearly with customers when problems occur and learn lessons when failures happen.

Resilience should not be treated as an aspiration; it should be a core obligation. However, currently, it is left simply to Ofcom guidance. Reliable mobile connectivity is now part of our critical national infrastructure. It underpins growth, services and everyday life, and the public rightly expect networks to be dependable. I ask the Minister: is guidance on something as critical as mobile resilience sufficient? Should Ofcom not instead require the mobile networks to have back-up power to their mobile masts? That does not have to be permanent back-up; it could be a fleet of electricity generators that can be taken to masts in the event of power outages. I do not believe guidance is sufficient.

My second question is: do the Government believe that citizens and consumers, which Ofcom has a dual duty towards, would benefit from a clearer national spectrum strategy from Government working alongside Ofcom? Thirdly, does the current regulatory framework provide sufficient tools to promote infrastructure competition? Ultimately, consumers need more than a choice of provider; they need confidence that the networks on which they depend deliver the coverage they need, that they are resilient and reliable, and that Government, regulators and industries are working towards a clear, long-term plan to fully utilise one of the most important assets our country has.