Ian Liddell-Grainger
Main Page: Ian Liddell-Grainger (Conservative - Bridgwater and West Somerset)Phone and Broadband Coverage (Herefordshire)
Ian Liddell-Grainger Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Jesse Norman
If my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) will let me continue, I will flag up when I am ready for the odd intervention or two.
The overwhelming majority of the constituents whom I surveyed thought that this was a serious concern and were in favour of action to tackle partial mobile phone not spots. We welcome the work that has been done on that by the Department so far. The situation is exactly the same for businesses. When Herefordshire’s sustainable food and tourism partnership surveyed its members, 97.8% responded to say that they had specific concerns and problems.
However, this is just part of a bigger picture. The Government need to look not merely at the effects of bad mobile and broadband coverage individually, but at their compounded effect. That is further magnified where there are insecure energy supplies, as in rural areas such as mine.
A mobile phone service is a lifeline for many people in rural areas, especially as BT telephone boxes are being withdrawn. Utilities, emergency services, telemedicine, delivery companies and tourists all require and rely on mobile and wi-fi coverage. However, it is common for my constituents to have download speeds of 400 kilobits per second and upload speeds of 120k—barely better than the old 56k connection—on aluminium phone lines, which prevent any kind of easy upgrade.
Welsh Water has told me that bad mobile coverage affects
“our speed of response and efficiency”
in attempting to serve tens of thousands of local people.
Kingstone surgery in my constituency has such a bad signal that if BT Openreach does not make urgent repairs, it will be unable to upgrade its software, potentially affecting 4,200 patients.
Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)
One of the issues that my hon. Friend is rightly exploring affects both our areas. Much of the rural heartland that we represent cannot be reached by the outreach that BT is doing, and we will need extra funding for some of our areas. I expect that that is exactly what he is homing in on. Across Exmoor, Dartmoor and those places, we will need that funding, I would have thought.
Jesse Norman
I think that is true. It is not clear that an enormous amount of extra money is required, but it does have to be targeted at areas that suffer that compounded effect.