Broadband: Voucher Schemes

(asked on 1st July 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 21 June 2021 to Question 16192 on Broadband: Voucher Schemes, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential effect of a commercial plan taking five years or more to deliver to premises on the success of Project Gigabit.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 8th July 2021

DCMS remains committed to encouraging as much commercial build as possible, while using the £5bn Project Gigabit to fund build in areas that are not commercially viable for suppliers to connect. The government’s target, laid out in the National Infrastructure Strategy published last year, is for 85% of UK premises to have gigabit capable connectivity by 2025. Our current analysis expects commercial suppliers to connect at least 80% of UK premises, with Project Gigabit delivering at least a further 5% in this timeframe.

A key component of Project Gigabit are the pre-procurement processes (Open Market Reviews / Public Reviews) to survey the market on their commercial build plans ahead of our major procurements. These will help us to identify premises in every part of the UK that the market does not intend to target commercially. This ensures that public money is not being used to subsidise gigabit capable connections that we know would otherwise be supplied commercially, which would limit the funding available for Project Gigabit to subsidise homes and businesses that are genuinely uncommercial.

DCMS will be continually monitoring the market’s progress against their commercial build so we will be able to react to any changes in their plans and update the targeting of our interventions to ensure they remain focused on the areas that need our support.

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