Superfast Broadband: Rural Communities

Debate between Antoinette Sandbach and Julian Sturdy

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Brady. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing the debate.

The Minister will well know the problems in my constituency. He will know that if he drives across my constituency, he will struggle to get a 3G signal, let alone 4G. Most of my constituency is covered by 2G signal, despite the fact that its inhabitants are relatively affluent and that many run their own small businesses. We are, or would be, a thriving rural community, but sadly we are poorly served by our broadband connection. In Eddisbury, not 5% but a far greater percentage are missing out. I will highlight an example. One of my constituents is trying to set up a new business in a rural area: a pub, which will also be an invaluable community hub. I have a lot of thriving public houses in my area. I will not list them, but I encourage hon. Members to come visit.

My constituent wants to encourage and support other small businesses nearby, but he has no sufficient broadband connection. He is considering getting an uncontended leased line to guarantee that he can reach speeds of at least 20 megabits per second. He has been quoted £9,120 per annum for the line and an initial £13,000 in start-up costs. That is not untypical in my constituency. It highlights the problems that rural businesses face.

Another business has a multimillion turnover, but it had to move out of its small business park—my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) mentioned the small rural business parks not connected by BT—and over the border into Wales to the Wrexham industrial estate in order to access the broadband speeds that it needs. That is not acceptable for the rural communities in my area, which struggle to grow their businesses. It is perhaps typical of what is happening in Eddisbury.

The map helpfully provided by the House of Commons Library indicates that vast tracts of my constituency receive less than 28 megabits per second. Although the Minister’s figures indicate that superfast roll-out is at 78%, I argue that, in reality, signal is simply not being delivered to people at the end of a copper line 2.5 miles from the exchange. That is the problem. BT says to those people, “You can have a community fibre partnership and link up your home.” That is fine for those who have a spare thousand pounds or two to top up, but sometimes it costs £5,000 or more to connect a single premises.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

My hon. Friend has hit on an important point that affects many of my constituents. Although we are getting fibre to the cabinet, there are lots of areas, especially in rural communities, that are well over 2 km from the cabinet on copper, which means that they lose the superfast broadband speed. Although they are technically connected to a cabinet with fibre, they are not getting superfast broadband.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

That is certainly the experience of my constituents. They find it deeply frustrating and are at a loss for what they can do. It is important that those communities and premises are addressed before we start megafast roll-out elsewhere in the country.

I welcome the fact that there will be a universal service obligation of 10 megabits per second. I ask the Minister not to let the telecoms companies wriggle out of that obligation. Often, in order to deliver that speed in rural communities, they may well need to lay more fibre. The universal service obligation seems absolutely critical to the last 5% or, in the case of my constituency, to the last 22% or more.

I urge the Minister to look at how he can strengthen and support the universal service obligation, and I encourage constituents to download the Actual Experience software, which sends data about the appalling connections directly to Ofcom. The more information we get in real time, the more the lack of service delivered from the roll-out will be clear to the Minister. I therefore encourage him to take action to strengthen the USO and to put what pressure he can on connecting Cheshire and rolling out to the remaining premises in Eddisbury.