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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent steps she has taken to prepare for the roll-out of ultrafast broadband.

The UK has made considerable progress so far in extending ultrafast broadband through full fibre and other connectivity technologies. According to thinkbroadband, over 52% of the UK has access to ultrafast speeds of 100 Megabits per second or more.

The Government’s aim is to provide ultrafast connectivity to as many businesses and homes as possible. We will achieve this by developing approaches to show how new investment from government and the private sector could transform the UK’s full fibre availability. We have set in train our investment plans for extending full fibre, investing £200m to fund locally-led projects across the UK to leverage local and commercial investment in full fibre, beginning the first wave of projects in 2017.

We are preparing plans to introduce a full fibre connection voucher for companies across the country by 2018. As we announced on the 3^rd July, the £400 million Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund will unlock over £1 billion for full fibre broadband, and kick-start better broadband connections across the country. Further information can be found here (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/billion-pound-connectivity-boost-to-make-buffering-a-thing-of-the-past)