Vodafone Extends 4G Mobile to 250 UK Rural Locations Under SRN

Mobile operator Vodafone has revealed that, as part of their commitment to the £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, they’ve now expanded 4G (mobile broadband) services to a total of 250 extra rural sites across England, Scotland, Wales, and N.Ireland (up from 200 in April 2024). A mast located in Church Stretton (Shropshire) was the 250th to go live.

The industry-led SRN – supported by £500m of state aid and £532m from operators – involves both the reciprocal sharing of existing masts in certain areas and the demand-led building and sharing of new masts in others between the operators. The goal of this is to extend geographic 4G coverage (aggregate) to 95% of the UK – from at least one operator – by the end of 2025 (84% when considering areas where you’ll be able to take 4G from all providers).

The programme actually consists of two targets. The first one is the deadline for delivery of industry funded improvements in Partial Not-Spot (PNS) areas (i.e. areas which receive coverage from at least one operator, but not all), which needs to be achieved by June 2024 – at this point 4G must cover 88% of the UK’s landmass. EE has already completed this, while Vodafone, O2 and Three UK have previously warned of an 18-month delay (here and here).

The second target reflects a deadline for improvements in Total Not-Spot (TNS) areas by early 2027. Just to be clear, Ofcom’s licence obligations commit each individual operator to increase its 4G coverage to 88% of UK landmass by June 2024 – and to 90% by January 2027 – with these individual obligations supporting the overall target of 95% by December 2025. So far there has been no delay to the TNS target.

Andrea Dona, Network Director at Vodafone UK, said:

“Church Stretton is great news and reaching our 250th SRN site is a major milestone for our programme. As society relies more and more on connectivity, we are confident that – through SRN and our other rural initiatives – our customers, living, working and visiting rural locations will benefit from a strong voice signal and fast data speeds. Our mission to make sure no part of the UK is left behind.”

Ofcom are due to assess SRN progress this summer, and they’re expected to report on the outcome of that during the autumn.