The UK government is planning to introduce a new legislation in the parliament sometime this week, which if passed will force mobile operators to agree on network-switching arrangements with their rivals – something that will prove beneficial to end consumers.
According to the plan consumers will be able to easily hop on to other networks in case the signal from their original operator is poor or non-existent or when they find themselves in notspot areas.
The report first emerged on The Sunday Times (paywalled), which claims that Department for Culture, Media and Sport will announce the national roaming law considering that major operators in the UK have failed to come up with a solution of their own to address low-signal and notspot areas. The report quotes senior Whitehall official, who revealed that the proposed national roaming law would be published as part of a public consultation document expected to land this week.
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The report claims that culture secretary Sajid Javid will be revealing plans about the national roaming law sometime this week under which the four major mobile operators in the UK – EE, O2, Vodafone, and Three – will be forced to share mobile phone infrastructure – masts in particular – in rural and remote areas where coverage is poor enabling customers’ phones to find the strongest signal.
“We’re keen on a national roaming plan. We’ve talked to the mobile phone networks and told them to come up with a plan. The secretary of state is pretty frustrated that they have failed to do so”, said the unnamed source.
The development, if true, wouldn’t be welcomed by mobile operators considering that they have already rejected network sharing plans previously proposed by Javid proposed as a solution to cull poor coverage.
The UK Mobile Operators Association (MOA), which represents the main four networks, has been vocal about the plans and has claimed that national roaming law would in fact demotivate operators from building more infrastructure.
