Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he will contact the mobile phone service providers and notify them of the problems with the service in the Castlecove/Caherdaniel/Derrynane areas in south Kerry; the plans they have to improve this service; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57572/12]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources in view of concerns in relation to the poor mobile telephone coverage in parts of the country, if he has outlined to the mobile telecommunications companies the need to invest to provide adequate mobile telecommunications infrastructure; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [57600/12]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 183 and 185 together.

The authorisation of telecommunications service providers generally and the award of spectrum licences including the imposition and monitoring of associated quality and coverage requirements for the spectrum rights to provide mobile telephony services are statutory functions of the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) under the Communications Regulation Act, 2002 as amended. The provision of mobile phone networks and services is undertaken by telecommunications service providers who operate in a fully liberalised market under licences provided by ComReg. These licences require MNOs to, inter alia,provide a minimum level of national population coverage.

The design of the network is a matter entirely for the operator concerned and operators tend to exceed their minimum coverage requirements for commercial reasons. Given that mobile telephony services are a radio based technology, they are however, affected by several factors, including topography (the surroundings, trees, terrain, buildings etc.) and the capacity of the network (the amount of subscribers on the same base station at a given time). Notwithstanding this, the recently concluded multi-band spectrum auction, has released spectrum, which was previously unavailable for mobile operators and industry has signalled that this should result in enhanced services being rolled out from 2013.