Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps he is taking to ensure that people in rural areas remain connected during the digital switch over.

The digital switchover is an industry led programme, but we do not want anyone to be excluded by virtue of the programme. That is why customers, including in rural communities, will not have their landlines migrated to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) without an available stable internet connection (VoIP only requires a minimum speed of 0.5mbps) and communication providers agreed a checklist of steps to protect vulnerable customers during the migration in November 2024. This includes landline dependent customers in rural communities.