Asked by: Danny Chambers (Liberal Democrat - Winchester)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to help accelerate the rollout of (a) 4G and (b) 5G in (i) central Winchester and (ii) other urban areas with limited mobile data availability.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
This government wants all areas of the UK, including urban areas such as Winchester, to benefit from good quality mobile coverage. Our ambition is for all populated areas to have higher-quality standalone 5G by 2030, and to increase 4G coverage to 95% of the UK landmass by the end of 2025 through the Shared Rural Network programme.
This government is committed to ensuring we have the right policy and regulatory framework to support investment and competition. As part of this work, the Government intends to reform the planning system to make it easier to build and deploy digital infrastructure.
Asked by: Danny Chambers (Liberal Democrat - Winchester)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether his Department is taking steps to support people with the cost of full fibre to premises connections in commercially viable areas where providers (a) do not connect premises and (b) require substantial fees.
Answered by Chris Bryant - Minister of State (Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
The government does not support individuals with the cost of obtaining a full fibre connection in commercially viable areas. However, we have deployed a range of measures to support roll-out in commercially viable areas to make it as easy and as cost-effective as possible for operators to rollout their networks. For instance, we have worked with Ofcom to create regulation that facilitates infrastructure sharing between operators. We are also working with local authorities to overcome planning barriers