Written answers
Wednesday, 21 February 2018
Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment
Telecommunications Services Provision
Willie Penrose (Longford-Westmeath, Labour)
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177. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment further to Parliamentary Question No. 1008 of 13 July 2017, the top five blackspots by county for mobile coverage; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9013/18]
Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Under Action 17 of the December 2016 Report of the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce, my Department and the Department of Rural and Community Development have worked to achieve a greater consensus around site selection for telecoms infrastructure and therefore improve mobile phone coverage.
In 2017, both Departments worked with a pilot group of local authorities to identify the issues associated with mapping local blackspots. The pilot exercise has since been completed, with all local authorities now being asked to map local blackspots and identify infrastructure that could potentially be used to provide additional coverage on an economic basis. This exercise is ongoing, and has been included in the 2018 Taskforce Work Programme. It is planned to have dedicated GIS resources in place to support this.
Under Action 40 of the 2016 Report, a review was conducted to identify recommendations to address blackspots. This work is continuing in 2018 under a focus group to inform future policy development and initiatives, in providing guidance with respect to specific categories of locations where high quality mobile phone coverage should be made available as a priority taking account of customer expectations.
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