Telecommunications: International Cooperation

(asked on 22nd November 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what trans-Atlantic technology co-operation her Department is supporting (a) generally and (b) in the field of telecommunications; and how does that support compare with that of the Trade and Technology Council.


Answered by
Julia Lopez Portrait
Julia Lopez
Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
This question was answered on 25th November 2021

The US and the UK are the very closest of partners, with cooperation extending from security and defence, to trade and prosperity, to science and technology among many other areas. During President Biden's visit in June this year, he and the Prime Minister announced a landmark UK-US Tech Partnership, which would build on our already strong tech relationship to ensure we are equipped to deal with the biggest challenges we face today. We continue to work closely with both the US and Australia as part of AUKUS, which will include cooperation on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and cyber capabilities.

The UK-US Tech Partnership is result focused and based on deep and practical technical cooperation.The partnership aims to strengthen UK-US cooperation in areas such as the resilience and security of critical supply chains, and emerging technologies including artificial intelligence and quantum, and to improve the accessibility and flow of data to support economic growth, public safety and scientific and technological progress.

As part of the partnership, we are taking forward collaborative activities to promote a more open and diverse telecoms equipment market, including opportunities for joint research and development and developing proposals on future wireless technology, such as 6G.

This range of cooperation puts us on an extremely strong footing with US collaboration and we intend to deepen it further.

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