10 Mar 2020

The Scottish 4G Infill Project: delivering rural coverage in Scotland

The March 2020 budget has rightly flexed the Government’s muscle behind the task of levelling up mobile coverage in rural areas. Delivering mobile coverage in sparsely populated areas is challenging, requiring active collaboration – between Central Government, Local and Devolved Governments, communities and businesses, landowners, infrastructure service providers and of course mobile operators.

The £25M Scottish 4G Infill (S4GI) Programme is a good example of such a collaboration, funded by the Scottish Government and the European Regional Development Fund (up to £10M) and administered by the Scottish Futures Trust. The aim of the programme is to implement 4G infrastructure in around 40 sites identified as 4G not spots in Scotland. The communications infrastructure services company, WHP Telecoms Ltd., was awarded the contract as the infrastructure provider for the end to end process of implementing and delivering the mast sites. WHP will also own and manage the mast sites which will be available to all Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to share. A key precondition for the commencement of construction at each site was that an agreement to use the site must be secured from at least one MNO.

Ongoing engagement with MNOs is critical to ensure as many sites as possible are taken up by a maximum number of MNOs to deliver the benefits 4G coverage will bring to the unserved areas in Scotland. WHP Telecoms is an industry expert when it comes to delivering mobile infrastructure. The mast site development process involves a full range of activities including radio coverage planning, site search to identify optimum site locations, site design, negotiating commercial site agreements with landlords, obtaining planning permissions involving local community engagement, structural and civil engineering calculations, tower construction, equipment installation, procurement and management of (shared) power and fibre backhaul connections, service testing, and commissioning and network integration. Once the sites are operational, WHP Telecoms manages the infrastructure, providing site sharing services to the MNOs using the site. It has also created a Community Benefit Fund to help promote benefits to the local community from the connectivity enabled.

On 19 February, the site being developed in New Luce, in Dumfries and Galloway, went ‘live’ with Vodafone services. EE services are anticipated in the coming months. A mobile mast in the area has been a part of the New Luce Community Trust’s action plan for some time.

Of the remaining batch of initial sites identified, the programme has secured agreement from at least one MNO on over 20 which are now undergoing the process of implementation. Of these around 11 should ‘go live’ over the next 12 months. Up to date summary of progress can be seen here.

The location of the sites involved presents some of the severest implementation challenges, in terms of accessibility to remote and high elevation sites, diverse terrain, and the lack of availability of fibre and power. WHP’s approach is to engage and collaborate from the outset with all stakeholders (the community, Local Authority etc) when choosing a location for the mast sites, in order to ensure the required mobile coverage is delivered in a way that is sympathetic to the environment. This project has been an excellent example of what can be achieved.

The Shared Rural Network (SRN) initiative being developed by the MNOs and Government promises to be an exciting way to tackle partial and mobile not spots across the UK. The experience and indeed the sites derived through the S4GI programme should be a valuable way to kick start SRN.

Location map of S4GI Programme sites

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