Broadband: Rural Areas
(asked on 27th October 2021) - View Source
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what progress they have made towards providing superfast broadband to rural areas of (1) Gloucestershire, (2) Wiltshire, (3) Oxfordshire, and (4) Berkshire.
Answered by
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The Government has made significant strides in helping to provide superfast broadband to people in rural areas. 97% of the UK now has access to at least 30 Mbps download speeds and this figure continues to rise. We are now investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit at the same time as commercial rollout so that rural communities are not left behind, prioritising areas with a relatively high proportion of premises without access to superfast speeds.
In Gloucestershire, 96% of premises can access superfast broadband (> 30Mbps), compared with 89% in November 2019. Gloucestershire has also made good use of the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS), which helps communities and businesses living in rural areas not in line for commercial rollout or Government-funded projects to get more immediate help with the costs of installing gigabit. They have had 322 vouchers connected so far, with a further 190 awaiting connection with a combined total of £1.2 million.
In Oxfordshire, superfast is currently above the national average at 98%. The Better Broadband for Oxfordshire project, which ran from 2015 to 2018, helped to increase superfast coverage significantly during this period from 69% to 96%.
Superfast coverage in Berkshire is also above the national average at 98%, compared with 97% in November 2019. There are currently two live superfast contracts across Berkshire, which have so far delivered to over 36,000 premises.
In Wiltshire, 96% of premises can access superfast broadband, up from 94% in November 2019. One of two contracts delivering superfast broadband across Wiltshire has been completed, while the other has so far delivered to more than 2,000 premises. This brings the total number of premises delivered to over 77,000
A total of 594 vouchers have been provided to connect rural premises in Wiltshire as part of the GBVS, with 240 vouchers awaiting connection for a total value of £1.6 million.