Rural Phone and Broadband Connectivity

Debate between Chris Bryant and Robert Smith

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)]

I am pleased to take part in this debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on securing it, because it has highlighted, across the Chamber, the need for broadband and mobile reception in rural areas, and the recognition that it is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.

Let me start by discussing the basic need for some kind of phone that connects someone’s house to the network and by reinforcing the concerns about the performance of Openreach in the most basic provision of phone lines, especially to new builds in the constituency. It has sometimes taken six months between someone moving into a house and their having a basic phone connection. We are talking not about superfast broadband or broadband, but a basic phone connection. Anything that the Minister can do to improve that performance will be welcome; the point has been made that such a connection should be treated like electricity and water as an essential service to the household. I hope he will also deal with the relationship between Openreach and the service provider in ensuring that the consumer gets compensation for a failure to deliver. Such compensation would help focus the mind and make some recompense for people not having that basic service.

As many have said, we still need to roll out basic broadband to many of our constituents. I remember that when the first roll-out took place the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) was the Minister. He was an extremely useful Minister for my constituency, because he dealt with broadband, post offices and the oil and gas industry, bringing together almost all the casework for someone dealing with a reserved section of the legislation, given that so many other activities are devolved to the Scottish Parliament. He was shown all the different innovative projects. At the time, Scottish and Southern Energy was going to do broadband through the electricity cabling, but suddenly the exchange in Stonehaven mysteriously reached the trigger point for BT to roll out ADSL. The point about competition and the importance of driving forward innovation has been made well in this debate. The wi-fi solution for many of those places still needing a broadband connection has been highlighted by others as an important way forward.

I particularly wish to reinforce the importance of superfast broadband to the north-east of Scotland, because with the oil and gas industry, there are a lot of businesses dealing with large amounts of data, and a lot of those businesses have grown up in rural parts of Aberdeenshire. Similarly, many people who work in the industry or work abroad could work from home if they had the proper superfast connections to deal with the data. The money that the UK Government have given to the Scottish Government needs to deliver on the ground for those people in the north-east of Scotland if we are to keep a vital industry effective, at its most efficient and raising more money for the tax system to reinforce investment in infrastructure.

The other challenge is not just the mobile phone reception from the network but the fact that many of the traditional houses are made of granite, which mobile phone signals cannot penetrate. The business centre in which the constituency office is based is a brand new building with high-quality insulation, which again cannot be penetrated by mobile phone signals.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman cites a problem that is very similar to the one that exists in the valley communities in south Wales. People cannot get mobile telephony inside their homes because their houses are made of stone or granite which cannot be penetrated by the signal. A possible answer to that lies in wi-fi, for which people need broadband. People end up getting hit by a double whammy.

[Sir Robert Smith]

The hon. Gentleman makes a point. There was also the illegal solution of boosters. Perhaps it is time for Ofcom to look at how mobile phone signals can be boosted in properties and business centres. Individual suppliers using wi-fi and broadband could be a solution—that could be the case for the business centre that I mentioned. There would need to be a signal booster for each network, but it should be looked at.

Let me reinforce the fact that broadband and mobile phone connections are not a luxury; they are essential. It is time that we saw delivery to those rural areas that missed out the first time round.