Broadband: Elmet and Rothwell

(asked on 6th January 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what progress his Department is making on delivering superfast broadband to homes and businesses located in remote, rural areas in Elmet and Rothwell constituency.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 14th January 2021

We have achieved 97.55% superfast broadband coverage in the Elmet and Rothwell constituency as a whole which is above the UK and National average. This has increased more than 5% in the last 3 years.

We are, however, not resting on our laurels and have a project running in partnership with the West Yorkshire Combined Authority to utilise the latest Fixed Wireless technology to further improve Gigabit broadband connectivity across the West Yorkshire region including 100 additional postcodes in the constituency.

Ultrafast (100Mbps) coverage is now at 68.87% in the Constituency and Gigabit coverage (1,000MBps) is now at 66.34%, both of which are also above the National average. This time last year Gigabit coverage in the constituency was just 11.8% so we have seen a rapid increase of the latest broadband technology in 12 months. (Source: https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E14000689)

For Constituents in your rural areas we would draw your attention to the UK Government Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme, which offers vouchers of up to £1,500 for Residents (as part of a Community Scheme) and up to £3,500 for SME’s. This is to enable them to upgrade to the latest technology.https://gigabitvoucher.culture.gov.uk/

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