Dave Robertson, MP for Lichfield, Burntwood, and the villages

No MP or councillor in rural Britain needs me to tell them that mobile-phone service must urgently improve. Usable signal – which in 2026, should mean high-quality 5G – is an essential. Yet Britain has the slowest 5G rollout in the G7. The cost is stark and quantifiable: high-quality 5G rollout could lead to 159 billion in gross value added to the economy by 2035. If we fail to deliver, it is the countryside that will suffer most. 

Why are other countries racing ahead? The causes are various. But one part of the problem seems to be a policy introduced by the Conservatives – and continued under this Government.  

The Electronic Communications Code (ECC), introduced in 2017, changed the system that governs agreements between mobile-mast companies and the landowners they rent ground from. It was designed to address a problem that was seen to be holding back 5G rollout – that landowners were demanding very high rents for access to their land. Lower rents would make it cheaper to roll out new masts, so the theory went.

But it seems the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Because the new code has pushed the rents paid to landowners so low, many now see little reason to host masts at all. Rather than speeding up deployment, it has triggered a surge in litigation between mast companies and landowners. Whenever a potential mast is tied up in a legal challenge, costs increase and construction stalls. 

Part of the problem is that the ECC was designed for a market that no longer exists. At the time it was introduced, towers were generally owned by mobile-network operators (MNOs) – familiar high-street brands, like O2, Three and Vodafone. But under the new code those companies sold their masts to other firms, known as wireless infrastructure providers (WIPs), who build, maintain, and rent towers to the operators.

WIPs do not have the same obligations and targets as MNOs when it comes to service provision. Yet they benefit from lower rents. 

Now the Government is extending the ECC, by implementing Sections 61–64 of the Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) Act, which expand the current system. Meanwhile, Section 70—the one statutory safeguard for landowners, establishing a formal complaints process—has been left on the shelf. Omitting the only mechanism that could rebuild trust in negotiations risks entrenching existing problems.

Eight years after the ECC’s introduction, Parliament has never reviewed whether the system actually works. We need to examine the facts: only a proper evidence base, independently produced, will determine whether the ECC is helping or hindering our 5G rollout. That’s why I – along with more than 20 other Labour MPs – have written to the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee, asking them to look into this.  

ECC and PSTI are acronyms that mean nothing to most people. But the role they play in shaping the mobile-mast market affects communities across Britain every day. If 5G is truly a national priority, then so too must be fixing the policies standing in its way.