LORD Steel is calling on phone companies to build the phone masts needed to ensure rural populations have reception.
The peer, who lives in the Ettrick Valley, was speaking during a House of Lords debate on the Digital Economy Bill over new responsibilities for regulator Ofcom.
He said: “The companies that have not built the necessary masts should do so ... Thes
e companies are falling down in their duty.”
Ofcom is failing in its duty to promote “appropriate levels of investment in electronic communications networks,” he added.
He told fellow lords he lived in an area that had no mobile reception.
“Both my mobile telephone and the gadget which the House of Lords kindly provides me with to receive communications do not work. I have raised this in correspondence directly, but Ofcom has tended to shrug it off by saying that it is not part of its responsibility.
“I should have thought that in this day and age there should be a general policy to ensure that where there is at least a reasonable population – I am not talking about the tops of mountains – and villages which do not yet have a telecommunications network, the companies that have not built the necessary masts should do so.”
