Broadband

Calum Kerr Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Calum Kerr (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (SNP)]

Fantastic. Thank you very much, Mr Owen; you are now my favourite Chair.

I thought I was going to have to write to the ASA about the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman), who was supposed to lead this debate, but only about 10% of the content was him; the other 90% was his colleagues. I am sure he will not be lacking people buying him a beer at the bar. I congratulate him on securing the debate and on having a good evening.

This is a welcome debate, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman is destined for great things. The focus on broadband is appropriate. Today we are homing in on a particular aspect, so this debate has not been the usual venting of frustration about poor broadband speeds. He made some interesting suggestions.

It is important to recognise that in a world where the majority of our broadband is delivered through fibre to the cabinet, broadband speeds will, by definition, vary because of the delivery mechanism. It is hard to nail down a top-line speed that everyone will always receive. Granted, the Minister is leading us on a crusade towards fibre, which we endorse and encourage to happen faster. That will make things simpler, because if everyone is fibre-connected it is much easier to say that people can get a certain level of speed. The hurdle is normally in the last mile. Going forward, with fibre everywhere, the potential bottleneck is in the backhaul, but things will at least become much easier. I thought that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness gave an excellent introduction, despite his colleagues’ “help”.

On the point that fibre means fibre, that was actually said in proceedings on the Digital Economy Bill. The Minister, who I am sure will remind us of this, was very pleased with himself, because it came shortly after “Brexit means Brexit”. When asked what fibre meant, the Minister said that “fibre means fibre”, and we all thought, “Actually, that’s pretty good.” He should tell the ASA that, because if we look on its website, we find that when challenged on this issue, it has repeatedly said that it is acceptable to call FTTC “fibre broadband”.

[Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)]

The problem is that we have given advertising agencies far too much scope over the years. It is a fact that life does not go better with Coca-Cola and a Mars bar does not help you work, rest and play, and if companies are not giving fibre to the house—that is not the same as giving copper to the house— they should say so. That is what the adverts should be telling us.

[Calum Kerr]

I completely agree. I saw a bizarre exchange on Twitter, in which a very senior individual in BT, when challenged on its claims about fibre delivery, said, “Well, we deliver fibre broadband by a different route.” The reply was, “You mean copper, in other words, so it’s not really fibre, is it?” That is something that should be flushed out. The point that the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness made, and others reinforced, was that there needs to be integrity in the offer.

I would like to touch on a couple of aspects of the problem. The issue is not just the speed, but how broadband is packaged. If people go on BT’s site or Virgin’s site, they will find an “up to” package. Part of the frustration is that those buckets are very large. Whether I get 1 Mbps, 2 Mbps or 10 Mbps, if I have signed up to an up to 17 Mbps package, that really rankles. I am paying the same as someone with 17 times the speed that I have. There is not actually an answer to that. Ofcom will tell us that the market has to deliver more choice, but in rural areas more than urban areas, the market does not function. There are challenges there.

I will make a few other quick points, but by the way, the idea of grapes was genius. That was the sort of thing we used to bring the teacher. I do not know whether that was what the hon. Gentleman was hinting at. He will be turning up with seedless grapes for you next time, Mr Owen.

Compensation, which the Digital Economy Bill empowered being put in place, is a welcome addition. At the moment, Ofcom is minded to make it possible only in a loss of service situation, and I accept that that is a reasonable starting point, but our direction of travel should be to say that broadband is far more than just a headline download speed. It is about download, upload and potentially latency, although not if we go with fibre. We should be able to expect a maximum and an average. The idea of a broadband package doing what it says on the tin should be considered, and ultimately compensation should go far further.

I repeat the congratulations to the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness on bringing this debate forward. We clearly need to improve clarity about what broadband packages involve. I am sure that the Minister is keen to ensure that fibre means fibre and that people get broadband that does what it says on the tin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

Yes—I might include a copy of the Hansard, although I know that the Advertising Standards Authority will be listening because I spoke to its chief exec yesterday to explain that this debate was going to take place. I explained that it is not only the Government’s view that we need to have more accurate advertising, but a widely held view in Parliament.

To give the ASA credit, it has made serious progress in one area. Last year it changed the rules on prices for landlines and line rental being advertised separately from the price for just the broadband element. Previously, an advert might have had the broadband cost and then said in the small print at the bottom, “You also need line rental of £19.99 a month.” Now it has changed those rules, so the costs are amalgamated. That has been a success and, in a way, shows what an effective body the ASA is when it insists on accurate advertising.

[Calum Kerr]

That is a really important point, because we have seen that there is real competition in the line rental part of the sector. It is a bit like the case of low-cost airlines—once the whole price is considered, competitors compete across every part of it. By making that change the ASA has driven far greater competition, and it should be encouraged by that.

[Matt Hancock]

Yes, it should. Its sister body, the Committee of Advertising Practice, which is responsible for writing the UK advertising codes, is now in the midst of reviewing its guidance on broadband speed claims and is on course to publish the findings of that review this spring—I am sure that it will listen carefully to this debate.

The ASA has made progress this year and is in the middle of consulting on and reviewing the issue of “up to” speeds, but there is an area where it has not yet made any progress: the description of the technology. In my view, and having talked to many people about broadband, some people look at numbers when making a decision and some look at descriptions. It is natural that we look at different things. Describing technology as “fibre” when it is not in fact entirely fibre is misleading. If anything, that view was compounded by a briefing note given to me by BT for this debate, which says that

“customers overwhelmingly have no preference for the technology used to provide broadband.”

That may be true, but it does not mean that people want an inaccurate description of the technology. It goes on to say:

“While BT does provide the most FTTP (‘full fibre’) lines across the UK, the average FTTC line is around 93% fibre…The ASA has looked at this situation and agrees that services using almost entirely fibre-based technology can be described as ‘fibre’.”

I very much hope not for long. BT then demonstrates why that is deeply misleading, because the next sentence says:

“A higher proportion of UK premises can access fibre broadband than in any of the other four major European economies (Germany, France, Spain, and Italy)”.

That is not true. It is true only if “fibre” is defined as being part fibre and part something else, whether copper or aluminium. If fibre is defined as being fibre—I believe that fibre means fibre—in fact we are not the best of the five major European economies, but the worst. Accuracy would help BT to provide more accurate briefing notes, and its use of the term “fibre” should be updated. I am sure that the ASA will be able to take that forward in due course.

I want to touch on a couple of the other comments that were made. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) and the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), in a commendably crisp speech, made points about business connections. If anything, this issue is more important for business customers, because businesses of different sizes may need services of different scales. Whereas a superfast connection is more than most households would need at the moment, if businesses have several people working on data-heavy projects they might need a highly scalable product, and for that, the technology really matters.

I am sure that everyone is delighted that in the Budget this afternoon, the Chancellor announced significant progress on having a full-fibre business voucher. I am delighted that that will now be rolled out. We proposed it first in the autumn statement and consulted on it in the last couple of months. I am delighted that it was part of the Budget; it will be an important step forward. However, we have had to describe that as “full fibre” to get away from the completely unnecessary ambiguity over the term “fibre”. I am confident that that will change soon.

The second point I want to touch on—again, this was raised by the right hon. Member for Slough—is the appropriate proportion of customers who should be able to get a particular speed. That is technically difficult, especially because speeds vary when more people get on to the network, so it is important to ensure that we get the technical specifications right. I have full confidence that the ASA, in listening to this debate and to customers around the country, and in considering the technical challenges, will come to a reasonable conclusion. I look forward to working with it to get there and to engaging with Members on both sides of the House to make sure that we have a fully functioning, competitive, well-informed and accurate broadband market, and that people no longer feel the frustration of being misled by thinking that they are buying one service when, in fact, they are delivered another.