The UK’s remote rural communities do not have the broadband access they need to fully participate in a digital society. Mentor believes the answer lies in a complete overhaul of rural spectrum use.

In October 2019 the UK government said it will provide up to £500 million to fund a £1 billion shared rural network (SRN) run by the four national mobile network operators. To be worthwhile, the SRN should offer fixed wireless services where good fixed broadband is unavailable. And for that it needs capacity.

But the current SRN proposal wastes precious capacity in the sub-1Ghz range, by fragmenting spectrum between the MNOs. In this Insight Guide we explore why it makes sense to create a true SRN, based on pooling spectrum in the 9% of the UK geography without mobile coverage.

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