Norfolk MP wants the Gov to 'get creative' to give us more reliable phone signal
Duncan Baker MP is quizzing the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport today
A Norfolk MP wants the Government to 'get creative' to ensure we can have a more reliable phone signal, faster.
Duncan Baker the MP for North Norfolk will be quizzing the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport alongside Waveney MP Peter Aldous from 9:30am.
He wants to know how the Government intend to roll-out reliable phone signal without spoiling local nature beauty spots.
He told us that churches in his constituency have been used to support masts and signals: "They have been so effective, often it can be quite difficult to achieve that through the planning process but why can't we have better infrastructure on top of bus shelters, lampposts and road signs to try and then help broadcast that signal, so people get a better and more reliable one".
He went on to say that rural areas are really suffering and the issue's holding Norfolk back: "Let's say you're in a place that doesn't have very good mobile phone signal, you're doing your online banking and you're trying to get that text message sent through, you don't get it for a couple of hours and then you can't do what you're trying to do.
"The reliability of being able to use a car parking machines is another issue. It might have a contact payment system for example and it then doesn't work very well because it can't get a good mobile signal.
"We certainly have 'not spots'- where you just can't get a reliable signal. If you are having more people working in North Norfolk and Norfolk more generally.
"We've got to make sure that it's not just our city centres that have full bars in terms of phone signals, we want to make sure that we have that in our rural areas as well".
He concluded by warning that the East mustn't be forgotten moving forwards: "It's very important that our rural areas in the east are treated with the same fairness as the North and that we get our fair-share of infrastructure or education or medical facilities. But it goes across the whole piece, we want to have strong connectivity."