Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent progress he has made on superfast broadband delivery in each region of the UK.
The Government is committed toprovidingsuperfast broadband coverage to 95 per centof UK premisesby 2017. At the end Phase 1 of the programme, we expect to reach 90 per cent coverage across the UK -and more than 90 per cent superfast coverage in around two thirds of local body partnership areas. For the longer term the Government will also launch a public consultation early next year in preparation for the implementation of a new broadband Universal Service Obligation, with the ambition to give people the legal right to request a connection to broadband with speeds of 10 Mbps, no matter where in the country they live.
Data on regional and local coverage of superfast broadband was published by Ofcom in its Infrastructure Report in December 2014:
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/infrastructure/2014/Fixed_local_authority.csv.
DCMS has also placed estimates of superfast coverage at constituency level at the end of the current broadband programme in the House of Commons library, reference DEP2015-0163: