Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 7 May 2026
22. Deputy Michael Cahill asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport to urgently address the extremely poor mobile phone service at numerous locations across County Kerry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [33220/26]
Amharc ar fhreagraMobile network operators are continuously improving their network coverage across both rural and urban areas to cater to ever increasing traffic volumes across their networks. However, I am aware that the quality of network coverage is not uniform across the country. Many factors, such as the terrain and topography of an area, will affect how well radio signals propagate from base stations to users’ phones.
While the availability of mobile phone coverage is primarily a matter for mobile network operators, operating on a commercial basis in a liberalised market, they are regulated by the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg) and they are assessed against the terms of their licence.
Where customers are not receiving good coverage, they should contact the customer care team of their mobile phone operator to make a complaint regarding poor coverage and then follow their official complaint procedure. If complaints are not resolved to the consumer's satisfaction they can then be escalated to ComReg.
To assist consumers to choose the mobile network provider that best meets their needs, ComReg continually updates and enhances its online national outdoor mobile coverage map at coveragemap.comreg.ie which provides information on mobile network operators’ outdoor coverage.
In addition, the Department supported ComReg’s completion of a Multi-band Spectrum Award in January 2023 to assign additional long-term rights of use across four spectrum bands to enable operators to provide improved services to meet increasing consumer demand for mobile services.
These awards represented a 46% increase in the harmonised spectrum assigned for the provision of wireless broadband services, including 4G and 5G, in Ireland and included significant coverage obligations for operators.
Those licence obligations place a key focus on delivering improved coverage to population centres, such as places where people work and live, rather than solely focusing on geographical coverage. They also focus on improving network coverage of the national primary road network. Those obligations come into effect on an incremental basis 3, 5 and 7 years after the licences were first awarded in 2023.
Operators continue to add new capacity to their networks using both their newly acquired radio spectrum and by upgrading the radio technologies on their existing spectrum. The timing of the improvements delivered by mobile operators are influenced in part by their ability to acquire and build new sites for increased coverage.
It is also important to note that emergency 999/112 calls from mobile devices can use any available mobile network, even a network that the end user is not a customer of.
