Rural Areas: Superfast Broadband

Lord Bishop of St Albans Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund is expected to be available to support the provision of superfast broadband in hard to reach rural areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, the digital infrastructure investment fund aims to support industry investment in full fibre networks, which are the next generation of digital infrastructure. The Government are committing £400 million, which will be at least matched by private sector investments on the same terms. It will be up to the selected managers of the fund themselves to make investments.

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

I thank the Minister for his reply. Fibre alone may not be sufficient to reach the final 5%; that is, those who will not have access to superfast broadband by the end of this year. In the light of that, what is being done to encourage the use of alternate or mixed technologies? In particular, when is BDUK expected to publish its report into superfast broadband market test pilots, which we were promised was to be published at the end of last year?