Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether British Telecoms is liable to pay penalties in the event that the Universal Service Obligation for broadband is not fully implemented by 2020.

The Government took a power In the Digital Economy Act 2017 enabling the introduction of a new broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO), which would give people the right to request a connection, at a minimum speed, from a designated provider, up to a reasonable cost threshold. On 30 July, a consultation on the proposed design of the broadband USO was published, and the Government also announced that BT had volunteered a proposal to deliver universal broadband. The BT proposal, if accepted, would be legally binding, and deliver a minimum speed of at least 10Mbps, with many premises receiving substantially faster speeds. BT's offer has the potential to deliver better connectivity to people more quickly than under a regulatory USO so we are considering it carefully. A decision will be taken on the best route to deliver universal broadband, once we have considered the responses to the regulatory USO consultation which closed on 9 October, and worked through BT's offer in detail with them.

Once a specification for a broadband USO is set in secondary legislation, it would fall to Ofcom to implement the USO, by designating one or more universal service providers and imposing regulatory conditions on them. Ofcom would also be responsible for enforcement of these conditions.