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UK Govt's Expensive Mobile Coverage Project Builds Just 8 Masts In 4 Years
An anonymous reader points out a dismal report at The Register on a project intended by the UK government to connect lots of internet have-nots, but which has so far not accomplished as much as hoped. The Mobile Infrastructure Project is intended to provide last-mile connectivity, but the project has languished, and fallen short of its promises. This year, Department for Culture, Media and Sport has managed to erect only six masts, which can serve about 200 homes apiece.
Originally more than 575 sites had been commissioned, following the publication of the “no coverage” database by watchdog Ofcom. At the rate seen so far of four masts a year it will take over 140 years to complete the £150m Mobile Infrastructure Project. The original deadline was to to have all the sites equipped and live by the end of 2015. However, that deadline was extended to March 2016 to "ensure that benefits of the program are maximized."
These two series of documentaries are necessary if you wish to understand the politics of government and public service:
Yes, Minister and Yes, Primer Minister.
It certainly sounds like they fucked this project up pretty vigorously(if nothing else, even if it is amazingly difficult for some reason, failing to identify that ahead of time is bad); but there is one important aspect you fail to note: The project's objective was to provide coverage to areas that private operators were not providing coverage to. Exactly what mixture of 'potential customers too poor'/'topography ensures lousy RF propagation'/'planning permission, rights of way, and fights with the neighbors will be a march through hell' caused private operators to ignore these areas is unknown, at least from this article; but for one reason or another providing cell coverage was an area of utter disinterest and/or inability for the private sector in these areas.
That's a pretty major distinction: walking in on something that the private sector is doing vigorously and competently and deciding that we need a Ministry of Whatever is folly. Coming into a situation that the private sector is unable or unwilling to address and doing something about it is what 'the public sector' is all about.
There is room for debate about what counts as 'unable or unwilling', and when we should do something vs. just let them suck it up; but 'do what the private sector won't or can't' is essentially the mission statement of even libertarian governments(they just interpret that as a pretty small number of things).
UK network operators are castigated by the UK Government for not building out mobile coverage in rural areas.
Network Operators respond by pointing out that they don't because of the difficulty in finding locations to provide the required coverage, local planning applications, the availability of power and problems with site access.
UK Government says "amateurs, we can do it better than you" so sets up project to do just that.
Project spectacularly fails to achieve anything and sheepishly admits that the reasons for its failure are due to the difficulty in finding locations to provide the required coverage, local planning applications, the availability of power and problems with site access.
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