Canterbury City Councillor Ben Fitter-Harding shares the latest update on improving connectivity in Canterbury city centre

I’m pleased to report that we’re both making excellent progress and lobbying hard for further improvements.

In April we passed a motion at Canterbury City Council to ensure our officers work with the mobile operators to facilitate improved coverage. This can be through helping them find suitable sites, and helping them navigate through the complicated planning process.

Since then I’ve been working with Vodafone and Telefonica (O2), as they’ve been the most proactive in addressing the issue so far. As a result, we’re getting a new mast on top of the BT Exchange building in the centre of the city as well as dramatically improved capacity city-wide, due for commencement in mid-November and completion by the end of 2019. I’ll keep pushing on MBNL, which operates EE, BT Mobile and Three infrastructure.

City centre-wide WiFi is also coming to Canterbury and this is imminent but I don’t have an exact timetable at this stage.

These efforts combined should make a significant difference to the experience we all have. We’re passionate about digital and the benefits it brings, and ensuring fast and reliable access across the district is one of the cornerstones of our approach. I’m very hopeful that we can elect Anna as our MP so that we can take this digital vision all the way to Government and keep driving improvements forward.

If anyone has any questions or thoughts, please get in touch through this website - I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Ben Fitter-Harding
Canterbury City Councillor
Chestfield Ward