Neil Carmichael
Main Page: Neil Carmichael (Conservative - Stroud)(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
My hon. Friend makes a powerful and important point. The answer must distinguish between broadband coverage and mobile phone coverage. We have a universal commitment for broadband coverage, and we are pushing for a 2 megabits universal service commitment by 2015, but mobile phone coverage is not in place. Were we to push for 100%, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) suggested, instead of the mobile telephone companies paying the Treasury for that spectrum we would end up with the Treasury paying them to take it. It is perfectly possible, as was suggested, that we could make a powerful economic argument to the Treasury on why it might make sense for the Treasury to pay mobile telephone providers to take it, but to do so we would need some very robust figures.
One sad thing about the Ofcom debate is that we do not yet have a group powerful enough to put those figures in place. Such figures would prove that 92% of those businesses in Penrith and The Border that employ fewer than 10 people would benefit enormously. In addition—this applies in all our areas, because many retired people live there—applications for telemedicine and telehealth with mobile phone coverage are much more exciting than those that currently exist on broadband.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
I want to say how important it is for businesses to get proper access to broadband and mobile coverage. I would add that in rural areas, it is good to facilitate independent living through good communications. That is another aspect to be considered.
Rory Stewart
I am aware that I should be coming to a conclusion, but at the end of my speech I shall draw together some of these interventions. The lessons show that it will be difficult.