Cat Smith
Main Page: Cat Smith (Labour - Lancaster and Wyre)(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Cat Smith (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
Over the summer, I had the privilege of speaking to a great many of my constituents about broadband access in north Lancashire. It has been clear since my election in May that many of my constituents, from both the farming community and the wider rural community, find poor broadband to be one of the biggest barriers to maintaining family connections—because they cannot Skype, for example—accessing things such as BBC iPlayer, and carrying out their the day-to-day business. As farmers increasingly diversify, poor broadband access cuts them off from many business opportunities. I will not cover ground that other speakers have covered on those issues, but I encounter very similar problems in north Lancashire.
Instead, I will tell a positive story about a community-led group in my constituency called Broadband for the Rural North, which has come together and, in true Lancashire spirit, decided to dig the trenches and lay the cables required to deliver broadband to rural communities. On 12 August this year, I joined Allen and Bruce, volunteers for B4RN, in laying cable and connecting the properties and premises just outside Dolphinholme in my constituency. That was fibre to the premises, delivering hyperfast—not just superfast—broadband, which is capable of 1,000 megabits per second. That is about 100 times faster than the superfast option delivered by BT.
That is an innovative and exciting project. What frustrates me, however, is that with the support of Lancashire County Council, after B4RN has connected up a village and achieved 80% or 90% take-up of its fibre to the premises, Openreach comes in and fits cabinets in the centre of the village, which offer a poorer service so people are not switching. My concern is that a few miles down the road, other villages have access to neither of those services, and it strikes me that it is not the most efficient use of Openreach’s resources for it to supply services to villages that have already found alternative ways of accessing high broadband speeds.
I end by noting my congratulations to Barry Forde and Christine Conder of B4RN, who were recently awarded MBEs in the Queen’s birthday honours.