Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure residents in (a) rural and (b) urban areas benefit equally from improved access to all broadband providers.

The Government continues to remove barriers to broadband roll out, including making considerable legislative changes and publishing non-statutory guidance to encourage fibre deployment. As well as changes to the Electronic Communications Code, all new build homes are required to have gigabit-ready physical infrastructure installed, and gigabit-capable connections where these can be provided within a cost cap. The Department continues to work closely with both local authorities and operators to support the rollout of digital connectivity across the UK and has published the Digital Connectivity Portal, extensive guidance for local authorities and operators to help facilitate broadband deployment. We also continue to work with the Department for Transport to trial a more flexible street works permitting system.

Alongside this, Project Gigabit is the government’s flagship £5 billion programme to enable hard-to-reach communities, left out of commercial delivery plans, to access lightning-fast gigabit-capable broadband.

Some of the hardest to reach parts of the UK are rural communities and therefore Project Gigabit will level-up mostly rural and remote communities across the UK. Most of our delivery volume will come through local and regional contracts and subsidies to suppliers to extend their gigabit-capable networks to premises that will not otherwise be reached by suppliers’ commercial plans. These contracts require the supplier to offer wholesale access to their network for other internet service providers to use, facilitating fair, open access to the infrastructure government is subsidising.

Most urban and suburban areas are already well served or part of commercial rollout plans, however, to reach our ambition of nationwide gigabit coverage by 2030, we recognise that pockets of poor connectivity in urban areas left out of commercial plans need to be tackled.

Work is ongoing to find solutions and define an appropriate course of action to ensure these premises are not left behind, solutions for these premises may involve working with suppliers and local authorities to enable commercial delivery rather than using public subsidy.