There are a number of elements. As you know, Ofcom’s strategy covers the entire UK, but there is increasing realisation that a single strategy will not deliver to consumers in all circumstances and locations.
It is somewhat trite to say it, but competition brings benefits. We have a set of activities that will bring benefits to rural consumers around competition and enabling new investments by new third parties in order to bring more broadband and better services to constituents and individuals in rural locations. Specifically, we have activities around duct and pole access, which we hope will lower the costs for community broadband services to roll out fibre to local communities, for example. Such initiatives help people to build networks.
However, commercial competitive dynamics will not work in all circumstances. As a result, we have focused on two major areas in our annual plan. The first is the role that we can play in a universal service obligation for broadband. To be clear, I note that, at present, that is a decision for the UK Government, but we have provided advice to it on the potential costs of approaches to delivering universal broadband across the UK, including in the nations. Once decisions are taken, we will have a role in implementing them—in designing a fund and, potentially, in setting the specifications for the service.
We are also focusing increasingly on what we can do in mobile areas and how far various policy options within mobile can address local concerns. That includes some far-reaching and fundamental considerations, including new coverage obligations on future spectrum awards, where we are looking to trade off, potentially, the value of the spectrum against an enhanced coverage obligation, thus extending that reach further. We are looking at how we might develop such coverage obligations—not just blunt instruments that look at geographic coverage, but targeted interventions that ask where people need, and will benefit from, mobile services, and how we take account of that. Increasingly, that will include things such as railway and road transport as well as isolated and hard-to-reach communities.
That is the macro picture, but we also have a set of micro initiatives. Using mobile repeaters, we can take services from Vodafone and so on and rebroadcast them for communities. At present, they are not allowed, but we are looking to allow those services where they will not create interference for other users, so that where communities are in a black hole—in a dip or behind a hill; places where there is a reason why mobile network operators cannot get there, at present—communities or individuals who are so minded can be empowered to take action themselves.
I would not say that any one of those individual solutions will work for everyone—there will always be hard to reach areas—so our final element is engagement with the UK Government and the devolved Administrations, including the Scottish Government, about the best way to target public procurement, intervention and money in order to extend the reach of services. For the UK Government, that has been in the broadband delivery UK programme, and for the Scottish Government, it has been in the reaching 100 per cent—R100—programme. We are supporting a set of activities. We are not the decision maker in the programmes because the matter is public policy, but we have the expertise and ability to help policy makers to make decisions for the benefit of consumers.