top of page

Coverage on a map, or a connection you can count on: telecoms regulation turns to quality, but will the market follow?

Writer: Chiara Garbellini
Chiara Garbellini
3 days ago
4 min read

Updated: 2 days ago


Ofcom is shifting the goal of connectivity policy from coverage to quality, betting that transparency will push operators to improve. But do consumers reward quality? The evidence on switching is mixed.


Speaking at Connected Britain on 9 September, Ofcom's Natalie Black set out the shift in plain terms: “Coverage on a map is not the same as a connection people can count on,” and “nobody cares how many bars they have if their video call freezes. They care whether it works.”[1] Her point: £10 billion has been invested since 2020, yet people miss out on the mobile performance they need more than one time in five. The country is not short of infrastructure; it is short of infrastructure that performs.[1]


What Ofcom is now measuring


The substance sits in Ofcom's June 2026 discussion paper, pointedly titled Connectivity you can count on: “coverage alone is not enough,” it says, and its coverage methodology was “developed around 10 years ago.”[2] In its place comes a quality benchmark: good connectivity at least 90% of the time, wherever people are. It's set on speed, upload and latency thresholds and measured from crowdsourced, real-world data rather than predicted coverage maps.


How would this work? By comparison rather than compulsion. Much of the machinery already exists. Ofcom reports real-world performance by named operator,[3] and its Map Your Mobile tool[4] sets operator coverage predictions against crowdsourced performance data; it has passed a million visits, and the same data now feeds comparison sites such as GoCompare and Which?. What is new is a common standard for what counts as 'good' and a plan to keep developing the tool so consumers can compare networks where it matters,[5] on the logic that better information drives investment.


But do consumers switch for better quality?


There is no direct evidence from Ofcom that consumers switch for better mobile network quality, and the evidence it does gather on consumers switching for quality is mixed. Consider three examples. First, take-up of what is already built: full-fibre passes around 78% of premises, but only 42% of those who can get it have taken it.[6]


Second, social tariffs: cheaper broadband packages for households on benefits such as Universal Credit carry the same speed and reliability as standard deals, yet by late 2023 only 8.3% of eligible households had taken one. When Ofcom tested how to promote them, an advert simply asking 'Do you get Universal Credit?' outperformed one stressing reliability. This was despite 66% of consumers highlighting the importance of reliability when surveyed, a larger share than highlighted price.[7] What people say they value and what actually moves them to act are not the same thing.


Third, willingness to pay: Ofcom has commissioned its own research into what consumers will pay for different broadband speeds as part of the Telecoms Access Review.[8] It suggests consumers place somewhat more value on avoiding a downgrade than on an equivalent upgrade: on average around £11.38 a month to avoid dropping from an 80Mbps package to a 40Mbps one, against about £5.32 to make the same move in reverse. Even where consumers value a better connection, that value concentrates on reaching, and not slipping below, 'good enough,' rather than on ever-higher performance. That directionally supports the adequacy standard Ofcom is proposing.


That said, some of this evidence may not read across cleanly to the quality benchmark Ofcom is introducing, whether because it applies to mobile rather than fixed broadband, or because the speeds it treats as “good” are lower than those tested in the willingness-to-pay evidence.[9] It does, though, raise a genuine question about how consumers will respond, one that may merit further empirical research.


Will transparency work?


Ofcom’s remedy is a common standard, with each operator’s performance published against it: regulation by sunlight, or what an economist would call yardstick competition, where the bar rises because a firm’s standing becomes visible enough that improving is the only option. It rests on sound theory. Reliability is something a customer cannot judge before buying, so a market that competes on what is visible at the point of sale, price and headline speed, will tend to under-supply it. Transparency is the correction: measurement is how the regulator makes the invisible visible enough to compete on.


The catch is that transparency only works if consumers act on it, and that is exactly where the evidence is mixed. If most customers would not switch for better quality, a better published number may raise the bar in principle and leave it untouched in practice. Making quality visible is necessary; whether it is sufficient, given this demand side, is the open question.


Ms Black asked the industry to make the next phase “about quality people can actually experience.” Delivering it, though, means getting a market that has always competed on price[10] to compete on reliability too, and Ofcom’s mixed evidence on consumer choice and switching is why that is not yet guaranteed. Whether transparency shifts that behaviour, or mainly publishes a number, is the real test of how far “connectivity you can count on” translates from a standard on paper into something consumers notice in practice.


Chiara Garbellini is a Principal Consultant at DT Economics. She is a regulatory economist with expertise spanning telecoms, digital platforms and payments, advising network companies, regulators and financial institutions across the UK and internationally.


The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, position, or policy of DT Economics LLP or its other employees and affiliates.


[1] Black, N., “UK connectivity: the next chapter”, Ofcom, September 2026. (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infrastructure/speech-by-natalie-black-at-connected-britain-2026).

[4] Ofcom, “Map Your Mobile – mobile coverage checker update”, June 2025 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/coverage-and-speeds/map-your-mobile-mobile-coverage-checker-update).

[7] Ofcom, “Why don't more low income consumers buy high quality, lower cost broadband?”, April 2024 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/online-habits/why-dont-more-low-income-consumers-buy-high-quality-lower-cost-broadband).

[9] Ofcom defines “good performance”, following the approach used in its Map Your Mobile checker, as a single crowdsourced measurement of at least 5 Mbit/s download, 1.5 Mbit/s upload and latency no worse than 50 milliseconds. See Ofcom, “Connectivity you can count on”, June 2026 (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/coverage-and-speeds/mobile-connectivity-you-can-count-on).

[10] “Strong competition has delivered real benefits too, with average prices falling by around a fifth in real terms over the last five years, while average data use has more than doubled.” See Black, N., “UK connectivity: the next chapter”, Ofcom, September 2026. (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-and-broadband/telecoms-infrastructure/speech-by-natalie-black-at-connected-britain-2026).

Comments

bottom of page