Ofcom operates the Sitefinder database of mobile phone mast
locations, much of which is published and searchable online. Users
can, for example, search for masts by address or postcode or view
them on a map.
The database, though, contains detailed information that is not
searchable. Some of it appears on the map when a user points at a
site, and some of it is not made publicly available at all.
Ian Henton, the information manager for NHS body Health
Protection Scotland, made a request under the Freedom of
Information (FOI) Act for all the information held by Ofcom to be
made public and to be searchable.
The Information Commissioner ruled in Henton's favour, as did
the Information Tribunal when Ofcom appealed. The regulator
appealed to the High Court, which has also now ruled that the data
must be published.
The full judgment is not yet available but a spokeswoman for the
Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) confirmed that the Court
upheld the original ruling of the ICO.
Ofcom had argued in the Information Commissioner and Information
Tribunal hearings that the site would no longer be useful if it had
to publish all the required information because the industry would
withdraw co-operation from the project. It said that operators had
already withdrawn their co-operation.
Since that withdrawal of co-operation last autumn, though, all
operators apart from T-Mobile have provided voluntary updates to
the information in the database.
The publication of the full, searchable database would be
commercially damaging, operators said. They said, for example, that
it would allow a user to plot an operator's entire network.
Ofcom did not say whether or not it intends to appeal the ruling
further.
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