Bigger and taller phone masts could be placed in the Britain’s rural areas in a bid to widen mobile data coverage and increase speeds. The government wants to speed up the delivery of 5G networks and improve mobile data in rural areas.
Currently masts on public land must be no more than 25m high but Digital Secretary Nicky Morgan wants firms investing in 5G to be able bypass such restrictions.
5G would allow more devices to have access to the internet at the same time and for the speed to be faster. The 5G networks require more transmitters masts than other technologies.
Around 400,000 super masts could be placed in UK rural areas, this could add in between £6bn and £13bn to the UK economy.
Ms Morgan told Sky News: “This is really important for people running businesses, for tourism, for agriculture.
“But it is about finding that balance between better connectivity, helping people to improve their productivity, and also protecting areas of natural beauty and the countryside.
She added: “At the moment we often walk past masts and do not even realise – they are disguised as lampposts, they might be in bus shelters, fixed to the side of buildings.
“It might not just be taller masts, it might be wider masts, having masts based on buildings nearer roads, and it may well mean taking away some masts that are no longer needed and stopping that proliferation.”
Current 4G mobile networks can offer speeds of about 45mbps (megabits per second) on average and 5G could be up to 20 times faster.
