Asked by: Robert Largan (Conservative - High Peak)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many properties receive broadband with speeds less than 30Mbps in (a) High Peak constituency, (b) Derbyshire and (c) the UK.
Answered by Matt Warman
In September 2019, Ofcom released their ‘Connected Nations Report’ which shows properties with speeds of less than 30Mbps to a variety of levels including constituency, county and across the UK: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/infrastructure-research/connected-nations-2019/data-downloads.
This data is always posted to the House of Commons Library: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/science/technology/constituency-data-broadband-coverage-and-speeds/
Whilst DCMS does not endorse any particular coverage checker sites other than Ofcom Connected Nations, we would draw your attention to this site which provides a useful way to access constituency, county or national level coverage statistics. This is their coverage data for High Peak, but you can select Derbyshire and UK from the dropdowns: https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E14000748. The data is updated more frequently than the Connected Nations data and is generally accurate.
Coverage data and “take-up” are not one of the same. We find areas of the UK where residents are complaining about internet speeds and on investigation we find that their area has been upgraded to Superfast (“coverage”) but residents have not asked their Internet Service Provider to upgrade them to the faster speeds (take-up”). Information on our Superfast funding for Derbyshire is available on the BDUK Programme Summary tab of the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hs00bNsyRV1WoOt-fow3rsNXzpcKg26AsOWvk1bvJRk/edit#gid=1411146266.
The spreadsheet shows that approx £19m of funding from central and local government was provided to provide connectivity to 103,755 premises. However in the Phase 1 contract 61.03% of premises have taken up that service, and in the Phase 2 contract only 41.64% of premises have taken up the service. This means there are many residents who could subscribe to a Superfast service but, for various reasons, have not done so to date.
There is also a very good paper at the HoC Library on the various Programmes that are underway to further improve connectivity https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8392/.