The government has installed the first of 86 new 4G mobile masts in the Welsh countryside in a bid to alleviate poor mobile coverage in rural areas.

Due to its mountainous terrain and sparse population, much of rural Wales is lacking 4G mobile coverage, and there is little commercial incentive to make improvements.

In 2020, an agreement known as the Shared Rural Network (SRN) was signed by all major operators – EE, O2, Three and Vodafone – to share some of their masts and infrastructure to deliver 95% coverage across the whole of the UK by the end of 2025.

The investment also came with £500m in public funding to eliminate ‘total not-spots’ – typically hard-to-reach areas where there is currently no coverage from any operator. Network operators have committed an additional £532m to the project.

Many of these efforts rely on upgrading existing infrastructure, rather than building new towers, in a bid to minimise the visual impact incurred with new masts.

“Bad mobile signal can cause people...