Broadband Speeds: Northern Ireland

Debate between Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick and Lord Vaizey of Didcot

Wednesday 6th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. This is the second debate I have replied to today. The first was at 2.15 this morning on the future of S4C. I was debating the issue with my colleagues and other Members from Wales. Yesterday, I was in this Chamber with my colleagues from England debating the importance of regional theatre. I know that that subject is close to your heart, Sir David, as a Member representing one of the cultural capitals of England in Southend. This afternoon, it is a pleasure to be with my colleagues from Northern Ireland, including the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who is an honorary Member for Northern Ireland, given his passion for the area. I am a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland. It was a pleasure to go to Derry/Londonderry when it was the first UK capital of culture. When it won that bid and took it forward, getting good broadband for Derry/Londonderry and the support of BT were important. It is a pleasure to visit Belfast and see the fantastic Titanic quarter, the home of “Game of Thrones” and the fantastic, burgeoning creative industries sector in that fair city.

[Ms Ritchie]

Will the Minister tell us what the Government are going to do about obtaining better superfast broadband speeds?

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[Mr Vaizey]

I certainly will. Like an ageing router, I am gearing up to move at speed towards the substance of the debate. The point I was trying to make was to praise my hon. Friends from Northern Ireland for bringing such passion and expertise to a subject that is important not only for their constituents, but for constituents across the United Kingdom.

To begin at the beginning, we work closely with the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, which is in charge of the broadband roll-out. In the devolved nations, the devolved Governments take ownership of the broadband roll-out scheme, and we work closely with them to ensure that it is under way. Northern Ireland was ahead of the game at the beginning of the process, thanks to European funding, and had more fibre than most of the UK. It remains a very connected nation. Ofcom’s recent “Connected Nations” report said that overall coverage is around 77% and that the availability of superfast broadband to rural homes had increased, too.

The current Northern Ireland project will add 24,000 superfast premises by March this year, and by 2017, a total of 38,000 premises will have been connected, thanks to our programme. Thanks to the £11 million of Government funding, we expect that Northern Ireland should have 87% of premises receiving superfast coverage by the end of 2017, which compares favourably with elsewhere. Small and medium-sized enterprises in Northern Ireland, for example, have the highest coverage of all the four nations for superfast broadband, according to Ofcom, the independent regulator. Also, I was pleased that Ofcom showed that the average download speeds for broadband in Northern Ireland increased from 50 megabits—already pretty substantial—to 56 megabits a second from 2014 to 2015, so we are definitely on an upward curve.

The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), who clearly knows her subject extremely well, covered various other important issues to do with broadband in Northern Ireland. She mentioned, for example, the scheme that we put in place to support small and medium-sized enterprises: our broadband voucher scheme. I am pleased to say that almost 2,500 businesses in Northern Ireland took advantage of that scheme. There has been cross-party support for the scheme, which has been a success. We will keep an open mind about whether it was right to reintroduce the scheme at a later date, but at the time it was time-limited. We wanted to get businesses to sign up to the scheme within a certain period of time, and I am afraid we had a deadline. However, I was pleased that more than 50,000 businesses in the UK took advantage of the scheme.

Importantly, wi-fi in public buildings was part of the scheme. In Belfast and Derry/Londonderry, 163 public buildings now benefit from wi-fi, but we need to go further. I have never made any secret of the fact that I hope that by the end of this Parliament we will have achieved 100% broadband coverage for the UK, and we need to do this in a variety of ways. First, we have our universal service commitment: everyone should have access to speeds of at least 2 megabits. We are doing this by allowing people who have speeds below 2 megabits to connect to satellite, and we will pay for them to be connected. That scheme is managed by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, so if any of the hon. Lady’s constituents do not have access to broadband speeds of at least 2 megabits, they can now apply for a voucher and be connected to satellite. That is our universal service commitment.

We have also put in place some trial pilots and a satellite scheme as part of the pilot in Northern Ireland and in Scotland, where some 300 premises have benefited from that trial scheme, which is designed to show us the costs of getting to the very hardest to reach premises—what we call the last 5%—and how we can get to them in the most cost-effective way. Northern Ireland has also benefited from the mobile infrastructure programme, and we are putting masts in “not spots” where there is no mobile coverage. Two of those masts are already live and another seven are being built.

[Ms Ritchie]

The Minister mentioned the mobile trialling project, which I understand was placed in South Antrim and in Fermanagh. Can he indicate whether that scheme is likely to be extended to other parts of Northern Ireland? He has indicated that there is a high level of speed in Belfast and in Derry, but I am concerned primarily about the rural areas that cannot access the speeds that are necessary for economic growth.

[Mr Vaizey]

If the hon. Lady is talking about mobile coverage, we have concluded the mobile infrastructure programme. At the moment there are no plans to build more masts, but, again, I will keep an open mind about that, because I am aware that some communities have not benefited from the scheme and would like to, and I will continue to keep that under review. It is worth reminding hon. Members that we have, in conjunction with the mobile operators, changed the terms of their licences, so that all four mobile operators are now committed to reaching 90% geographic coverage for 4G by the end of 2017. The distinction between premises coverage, which should be about 98%, and geographic coverage is important because there are many areas with very few premises, but that are large geographic areas, and we hope that the 90% commitment will see far wider 4G coverage for people in rural areas, and also for those of us who as passengers might use our mobile phone while being driven. Of course, we would not dream of doing that while we were driving ourselves. That is a very important point.

Going further into the future, the hon. Lady mentioned two or three issues that are important when we look at digital broadband roll-out over the next few years. The first is the potential break-up of Openreach, about which there is a lively discussion in this House and outside. The hon. Lady may be aware that Ofcom is conducting a digital communications review, and it is due to report towards the end of February, when it will make clear what it regards as the appropriate way forward for Openreach. We will wait to see what the independent regulator concludes in that respect.

I have already mentioned our universal service commitment, but the hon. Lady also talked about the universal service obligation, which is a different thing. We will introduce legislation to ensure that anyone who does not have fast broadband can require a provider to provide them with speeds of at least 10 megabits, which is twice what the European directive requires. We intend to introduce that legislation over the next two years, so that by 2020 everyone should be able to apply for fast broadband, if they do not already have it, through our other various initiatives.

The hon. Lady rightly talked about fibre to the premises, which is, to a certain extent, the holy grail of superfast broadband. I was lucky enough to visit TalkTalk, which was conducting a trial in York, at the end of last year. It is delivering 1 gig to the premises. However, it is important to remember two things: first, it is very expensive to deliver fibre to the premises, and secondly, it is pointless to deliver fibre to the premises for people who do not necessarily want it. In the small tech world that I tend to inhabit, almost everyone I converse with thinks that everyone in the country wants 1 gig. Actually, most people want 10 or 20 megabits so that they can run a home office or a business from home, or take part in various consumer activities that they and perhaps the rest of their family want to take part in. Those are the sorts of speeds we want to give everyone in the country.

To reiterate, first of all, I welcome this debate. I think the hon. Lady is right to highlight the problems and issues faced in her constituency and in Northern Ireland as a whole, and I welcome the contribution of other hon. Members. As I have said, we have an £11 million roll-out of the broadband programme. We will get to 87% of Northern Ireland by the end of 2017.

[Ms Ritchie]

The Minister made reference, as I did, to fibre to the premises. He indicated that that was the Government’s holy grail: the top-level aspiration. Currently, less than 1% of the UK has fibre to the premises. Although I understand that it is costly, it could be one way of ensuring that those hard-to-reach rural communities could have access, so what plans do the Government have, working with the technological companies, to ensure that that is part of the pathway to a universal service obligation?

[Mr Vaizey]

As I was saying, fibre to the premises is very expensive and is not necessarily what the consumer wants at this moment in time, but we will certainly see individual companies over the next 10 years starting to introduce it more and more. It is worth reminding the hon. Lady that the technology that BT is already beginning to trial should see, for example, existing fibre to the cabinet solutions providing speeds 10 times faster than they currently do. So we could see people in her constituency, currently receiving 30 megabits, receiving speeds of some 300 megabits in a couple of years’ time and at very little cost. We intend to go forward with the universal service commitment, then the universal service obligation, as well as trialling alternative technologies. However, the hon. Lady is right to hold us to account. I would like to continue to work with her and her colleagues in improving broadband in Northern Ireland.