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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to the report of the National Infrastructure Commission, entitled Connected Future, published on 14 December 2016, what her Department's plans are for preparing the UK's mobile telephone infrastructure for universal geographical coverage of 5G.

The Government recognises the importance of people having connectivity where they live, work and travel and is taking firm action to improve this right across the UK.

The legally binding agreement that we reached with industry in 2014 locked in over £5bn of investment in mobile infrastructure and will result in nearly at least 90% voice/SMS text coverage of the UK’s landmass by the end of 2017

But we agree with NIC that there is still further to go. We want the UK to become a world leader in 5G, which is why we announced over £1bn of funding at the Autumn Statement to support the deployment of the next generation of digital infrastructure, including an ambitious programme of 5G testbeds.

We will consider the NIC's recommendations carefully.