Kevin Foster
Main Page: Kevin Foster (Conservative - Torbay)(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Neil Parish
Occasionally, on a good day. To be serious, the people who have broadband are very happy and we do not hear much from them; the issue is the people who do not. I repeat that the more we talk about all those who have it, the more it drives on those who do not.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I am sure my hon. Friend will recognise that those of us who represent coastal communities face a real barrier to the delivery of infrastructure, better known as the sea, which rules out some of the options he has talked about. I welcome the Minister’s announcement in a previous debate that Torbay would have 100% coverage, but sometimes in an urban area it is the site that most needs to be covered—a business park or a development park—that is left out, even though nearby housing has been covered.
Neil Parish
My hon. Friend raises a good point. That is part of the trouble and is hard to understand. When someone knows that people right next to them have a good connection but they themselves have not it seems a huge anomaly. BT has so much fibre-optic cable that where it is rolling out the contract it tries to deliver broadband with that cable, but sometimes it simply will not work. I do not think that BT is necessarily deploying the other technologies that we need as fast as it should be.