Broadband Universal Service Obligation

Debate between Matt Warman and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Thursday 15th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman]

Yes.

The Government’s indication that, in the hardest-to-reach areas, connections will be provided on request, rather than by default, is a pragmatic economic response, but communities should be incentivised to go further. I would, however, caveat this approach—that it be demand led—by saying that the USO should surely be extended to all major roads, not just motorways, and to railway lines and stations as soon as possible. I know that the Department for Transport is working on this, but building it into the USO as well would be progress.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Over the many months I spent on the HS2 Committee, I tried very hard to insist that we included an obligation to provide broadband all the way up the line and that we gave affected communities access to it. I also think that for every development of over 20 houses we should insist that the developer put in superfast broadband. What does my hon. Friend think about that?

[Matt Warman]

I absolutely agree with both points. It is daft that we are not fibring up every new housing development by default, and it is short-sighted of developers, because we know that superfast broadband connections add value to the houses. There is virtue on both sides.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I would go slightly further than Lord Adonis’s National Infrastructure Commission did recently, and say that we should be slightly more creative in identifying areas of default provision.

Crucial to all this is the issue of data. There would be a real risk of cherry-picking if we were to publish simply a bulk set of every single connection and how fast it is; actually, that might provoke the sort of anti-competitive behaviour that none of us would like to see. However, it strikes me that publication of address-level data will provide constituents with an accurate picture of their broadband speeds now, and it should also provide them with a road map for the future, so that it would allow not only prospective purchasers of a house to see what speed they might get and what their upgrade path might be, but communities to pool their own data so that they can identify whether they should be going out to other companies to try to attract investment or whether they might be able to wait a little while because they know that a solution is coming.