THE sale of airwaves crucial to improving mobile signals should come with Scotland-specific coverage obligations, the organisation representing small businesses has said.
The Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) will call on Westminster’s Scottish Affairs Committee to push the UK Government to take up the proposal when it gives evidence next week.
The committee is investigating digital connectivity in Scotland.
Ahead of its appearance on Monday, the FSB said action was needed to help address Scotland’s “unacceptable” mobile coverage.
It highlighted Ofcom figures showing 17 per cent of Scotland’s landmass has 4G mobile coverage compared to 60 per cent of England’s. FSB Scottish policy convener Andy Willox said: “While some allowances could be made for differences in geography and population density, these figures show the gap between Scotland and England is unacceptably wide – as it has been for some time. Ofcom has suggested that nation- specific coverage obligations might be a means to address this embarrassing problem.
“The Scottish Affairs Committee must push the UK Government to take up this proposal.”
Statistics show Scotland also lags behind on superfast broadband, with 87 per cent availability compared with 92 per cent in England.
The Scottish Government has said initial investment will deliver superfast access to a “significant proportion” of the 245,000 homes and business which do not have access.
It said there will also be further phases “involving a wide range of superfast technologies, supported by a national voucher scheme, available to individuals and to communities”.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here