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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, when her Department plans to respond to the technical proposals produced by Ofcom on the designation of the universal service obligation for broadband.

A broadband USO will give households and businesses a legal right to request an affordable connection to broadband of a minimum specified speed, from a designated provider, no matter where they live or work, up to a reasonable cost threshold.

On 16 December 2016 Ofcom published its technical advice to Government on the broadband Universal Service Obligation. We are carefully considering the report, and we will be hold a public consultation on the design of the USO once we have completed that.