Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to expand broadband coverage in rural areas.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Government is investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit to deliver lightning-fast, reliable broadband to hard-to-reach areas across the UK. By the end of March 2022, we had delivered gigabit-capable broadband to over 740,000 premises, ahead of our target of 720,000 premises. Combined with commercial gigabit delivery, we are on track to hit our target of 85 per cent UK gigabit coverage in 2025.
We have launched procurements with a value of over £700 million to bring gigabit connections to hundreds of thousands more rural and hard-to-reach homes and businesses, and we recently signed our first contracts in North Dorset, Teesdale and North Northumberland.
As part of Project Gigabit the Government is investing up to £210 million in the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme to support rural homes and businesses with the cost of installing new gigabit-capable connections. To date, we have issued over 106,000 vouchers to homes and businesses through the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and previous iterations. Further information is available on the gigabit voucher website including eligibility criteria and how to apply for the scheme.
Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress has been made on rolling out the shared rural mobile phone network in Broadland constituency.
Answered by Matt Warman
The Shared Rural Network, which the Government announced in March 2025, will see operators collectively increase mobile phone coverage throughout the UK to 95% by the end of 2025, underpinned by legally binding coverage commitments.
The exact site deployment plans and associated timescales will be managed by the operators themselves in order for them to best deliver the agreed coverage outcomes, so at this time, and until the operators’ final radio planning exercise is complete, we do not currently have specific details on the precise impact that the Shared Rural Network will have on individual communities across the whole of the UK, including those in the Broadland constituency. However, we expect that consumers will feel the benefit of the programme long before its conclusion and the operators will consult with communities as roll out plans become clearer.
Asked by: Jerome Mayhew (Conservative - Broadland)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans he has to allocate funding from the £5 billion fund to support the rollout of full-fibre, 5G and other gigabit-capable networks to Broadland constituency.
Answered by Matt Warman
The ambition to invest £5bn for the rollout of full fibre and gigabit capable networks in the hardest to reach areas of the UK was announced in September 2019. This was reiterated in the Conservative Party Manifesto. In anticipation of the funding being announced in the March budget, mobilisation of the delivery programme is underway.
An application for State Aid approval has been submitted in parallel to both the European Commission and the UK Competition and Markets Authority.
Modelling of the Intervention Area (“the final 20% of premises / F20”) is underway.
The procurement approach is being designed in conjunction with Government Commercial Organisation and Crown Commercial Services
The delivery team is ramping up resources, processes and systems in preparation
Supplier and Local Authority engagement and workshops are underway
Plans are not yet at a sufficiently mature or at a sufficiently detailed stage to answer funding plans and dates at a constituency level, however we will provide more granular detail over the coming months. In the meantime our existing fibre delivery programmes continue to deliver further coverage. These include the Superfast, Local Full Fibre Networks, Rural Gigabit Connectivity Programmes as well as our Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme.