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The Shared Rural Network (SRN) project has just achieved one of its major goals, with there now being 4G coverage for over 95% of the UK’s landmass.
The SRN is a project run by the UK’s networks and the government, aimed at filling in coverage gaps across rural areas, and one of those targets was 95% 4G coverage – with the figure that’s now been reached being 95.61%.
This target was actually hit well ahead of schedule, with the goal being to achieve 95% 4G coverage by the end of 2025.
However, it’s worth noting that this only means that at least one network will offer 4G coverage – so that 95% figure doesn’t apply to coverage on every network (namely Three/Vodafone, EE, and O2).
Country differences
The actual coverage level also varies from country to country, it just averages out to 95.61% across the UK as a whole. In England, there’s actually better coverage than that, at 98.85%, and the same is true in Northern Ireland at 98.40%, and Wales at 96.30%, but Scotland pulls the average down, with just 89.56% 4G coverage.
So in Scotland in particular there’s still work to be done, but the SRN is aware of this, stating during this latest announcement that “We have spent time engaging with local communities and interest groups, especially in Scotland, to understand how best to maximise the benefits of future mobile upgrades.”
It adds that it will “prioritise new mobile infrastructure for areas where it will have the biggest positive impact, primarily where people live, work, or travel, including walking and hiking routes”, such as parts of the West Highland Way, Munros Ben Lawers, and Ben Vorlich, all of which currently lack a 4G signal on any network.
In any case, the next major goal for the SRN scheme is for each individual UK network to achieve at least 90% 4G coverage across the UK’s landmass by January 2027, and there’s still lots of work to be done to achieve that.
Right now, you can get 4G coverage on every UK network across 89.99% of England, but only 85.00% of Northern Ireland, 75.78% of Wales, and 65.75% of Scotland. That averages out to 80.67% of the UK – so almost 10% less than the SRN hopes to achieve in the next eighteen months.
