Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will publish the number of masts built using state aid that can be shared by all mobile network operators before the emergency services mobile communications programme begins.

In delivering the Emergency Services Network (ESN), the mobile network operator EE is delivering up to 291 sites funded by the Programme and upgrading its entire existing network, including deploying 4G spectrum in rural areas. The Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP) will deliver approximately 300 further sites (known as the “Extended Area Services” (EAS) sites) in the most remote and rural areas of Great Britain.

EE has indicated that they aim to provide commercial services from all the new sites that they are building for ESN and the EAS sites although this may be dependent on the backhaul technologies used at sites to connect the site to EE’s telecommunications system. Under the terms of the State Aid decision for ESN, any ESN site where EE offers a commercial service must be made available to the other UK mobile operators and interested parties to provide their own a service on an equal and non-discriminatory basis. EE has indicated that for all the sites they are building for ESN, they are providing detailed information to the mobile network operators on the locations once sites for new masts are legally acquired and planning permission has been granted. This includes additional sites that EE are funding as well as those funded by the Programme.

For EAS sites, the principal objective is to provide coverage to meet the needs of the emergency services, but the Home Office is working with the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and DCMS to identify any proposed mast locations which could improve mobile coverage in future, with a view to ensuring these are built to a specification which could accommodate multiple operators. The proposed site locations have been shared with the Scottish and Welsh Governments. Planning applications due to be submitted throughout 2017 will confirm and make public the precise locations of these sites.