Labour Manifesto pledges national 5G coverage

The Labour Party Manifesto has been published for the UK elections taking place on July the 4th 2024 and it includes plans for “national 5G coverage” by 2030. There are no promises of universal free broadband, as the previous Labour manifesto for the 2019 elections planned, which is not a surprise. They do plan to keep the existing pledge of gigabit coverage by 2030.

“Under the Conservatives, investment in 5G is falling behind other countries and the rollout of gigabit broadband has been slow. Labour will make a renewed push to fulfil the ambition of full gigabit and national 5G coverage by 2030.”

Labour Party Manifesto 2024

What this ‘renewed push’ equates to is unclear – perhaps there will be additional funding that’s made available to try and speed this up, although this doesn’t seem likely considering public finance strains that exist currently. It’s good to see the existing gigabit pledges remaining though and there is good work proceeding to help the country hit this with alt-nets and Openreach building FTTP.

Plans for “national 5G coverage” sound hugely optimistic considering the current aims are struggling to meet 95% of 4G coverage by the end of 2025. The license obligations from Ofcom for the mobile networks commit each mobile network to 4G coverage to 90% of the UK landmass by February 2027. Expanding this nationally and for 5G with only a couple more years to achieve it sounds unrealistic without significant funding from the government which is also unlikely to appear.

Manifestos should always be seen as a wish list rather than a contract for what will be achieved. Indeed, the Conservative Party Manifesto only states that it is an ambition for all populated areas to have 5G coverage, and they don’t have a deadline stated in which to achieve this.