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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether the Universal Service Obligation, that by 2020 everyone across the UK will have access to high speed broadband, includes people operating businesses from their homes in rural locations.

The broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO) will be available to every UK premise that is not receiving a broadband service that meets that minimum specification set out in the Universal Service Broadband Order 2018, up to the reasonable cost threshold of £3,400 per premise.

This includes people operating businesses from their homes in rural locations.

Homes and businesses in some hard to reach area will soon be able to benefit from the Rural Gigabit Connectivity programme, announced on 19 May. This is the first step of our "Outside-In" policy, as described in the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review published last year.