Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Oral Answers to Questions

Frank Roy Excerpts
Thursday 16th October 2014

(10 years, 2 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Mr Vaizey
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We had an extremely good meeting with my hon. Friend and her East Anglian colleagues, and we are looking carefully at the proposals they made. Norfolk, Suffolk and many other counties in East Anglia are great examples of counties that do not just sit back but take the lead and come up with interesting initiatives and proposals.

Frank Roy Portrait Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
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The Minister will know that it is not just rural areas that suffer from poor mobile phone coverage. For example, mobile phone coverage is not available in many areas in the town of Wishaw. What assessment has been made of towns such as Wishaw?

Lord Vaizey of Didcot Portrait Mr Vaizey
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As I say, we continue to work with Ofcom to identify not-spots, but at the moment the mobile phone companies are undertaking a rapid roll-out of 4G technology. Originally the licences would have required only one operator to provide full 4G to 98% of premises by the end of 2017. We expect EE to have achieved that by the end of 2014 and the rest of the mobile operators to have achieved it by the end of 2015.