Mr. Alex Chisholm:

With regard to services by mobile operators, in contrast to the universal service provision by Eircom which we discussed earlier, it is not part of a universal service so there is no obligation under any national or European law for mobile operators to provide 100% coverage. The obligations all operators face include signal quality, the amount of uptime and coverage by population and geography. The Deputy asked in particular about the obligations Vodafone faces, and under its GSM 900 and 1800 licences it has an obligation of 99% population coverage and 92% geographical coverage. Under its 3G licences it has an obligation of 85% population coverage. These are some of the key licence obligations it holds. The Deputy asked what do we do about it. Drive tests are conducted on our behalf whereby specialised equipment is moved throughout the country to test the strength of signals at various places. Approximately 60,000 such tests are conducted in a year.

We analyse the responses from our contact centre, for example, where people say that there does not appear to be a good signal, or where people make complaints or raise issues of which there is not a huge volume. When those issues are raised we make sure that the route taken by the drive testers is informed by those areas. They make a particular point of going to areas of reported weak coverage. We then use the results of those tests for two further tests. First, we use them to make sure that the companies comply fully with their licence obligations, which is the case. Second, because those are average national levels we also use them as a way of providing useful feedback to the companies to enable them to address any areas of deficiency that they might have.

The other type of activity which is important for looking at the overall quality of signal coverage across the country is the amount of spectrum that is available and for what period. An argument has been made to us that, towards the end of the periods of licence, people's incentives to invest in their infrastructure might be weaker. Until it was clear how long new licences would be held for-----