Speakers
Damian Bevan, Wireless System Analyst, Real Wireless
The four UK Mobile Network Operators (MNO) and the UK government have jointly committed (in March 2020) to a project called the ‘Shared Rural Network’ (SRN). Around £500M of MNO investment, plus a matching amount of government investment, has been committed to deploying additional (shared) terrestrial infrastructure. The aim is to improve so-called coverage ‘partial not-spots’ (PNS) and ‘total not-spots’ (TNS), particularly in remote rural regions such as much of Scotland, Wales, North Eastern England and Northern Ireland. In this talk we will first of all introduce the UK's SRN programme, before going on to assess whether or how interventions like SRN would benefit from future NTN and D2D capabilities. Perhaps this technology can be exploited by the MNOs and government to close even more post-SRN coverage gaps, to bring the U.K. closer towards full 100% UK (outdoor) geographical coverage of mobile services with improved costs due to network convergence.