Asked by: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessments he has made of the barriers to 3 network customers connecting to the 101 service due to tariff issues.
Answered by Matt Warman
The inclusion or exclusion of the 101 number from mobile phone plans is a decision made by individual telecom providers. Mobile phone customers can adjust their mobile phone settings, so they can ‘opt in’ to chargeable calls and use the 101 number. It is for telecom providers to provide this information to their customers in their plans.
The Home Office is removing charges for the 101 police non-emergency number, making the number free of charge for all members of the public from April 2020. The Policy for this sits with the Home Office.
Asked by: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment he has made of the barriers to 3 network customers connecting to the 101 service due to tariff issues.
Answered by Matt Warman
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether he is taking to steps to increase the powers that Ofcom and the Phone-paid Services Authority have to prevent intermediaries charging people to use freephone Government services; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Margot James
Ofcom has a power under the Communications Act 2003 to regulate premium rate services, those higher rate services charged to telephone bills, which it has delegated to the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA).
Providers of intermediary connection services, known as information, connection and signposting services (ICSS) are subject to PSA’s strict mandatory Code of Practice if they operate under certain number and price ranges. Ofcom recently consulted on proposals to broaden the scope of the rules so that they would apply to all such services, meaning that all ICSS would be subject to the PSA’s remit. Ofcom aims to publish its decision before the end of 2018.
Asked by: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what plans his Department has to incentivise housing developers to ensure that all new homes can receive fast broadband.
Answered by Margot James
The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is strongly committed to ensuring new build developments have high quality, reliable and future-proof connectivity.
In early 2016, DCMS brokered an agreement between Openreach and the Home Builders Federation (HBF) so that all new build developments would be offered with Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) for free, or as part of a co-funded initiative. In November 2016, Openreach announced that it would provide FTTP to all new developments with more than 30 plots for free. Virgin Media and GTC, another infrastructure provider, have similar agreements with the HBF.
My Department’s Barrier Busting Task Force are exploring how we can build on this to ensure that all residents of new build developments receive the connectivity they deserve.
Asked by: Paul Williams (Labour - Stockton South)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of launching a new scheme, similar to Project Lightning, to ensure that more homes can provide usable broadband.
Answered by Margot James
The Department welcomes commercial investment in UK digital infrastructure such as Virgin Media’s Project Lightning and is working to encourage further investment through policies and funding. These include Business Rates Relief for fibre investment and the £200m Local Full Fibre Networks programme to fund locally-led projects that leverage commercial investment in full fibre broadband connections. For alternative network providers, £400 million of public funding has also been made available for fibre connectivity through the Digital Infrastructure Investment Fund, which will unlock approximately £1 billion of private investment.
Looking further ahead, the Future Telecoms Infrastructure Review is currently assessing what market models can best support broadband infrastructure investment in different areas of the UK.
The Government’s existing £1.7bn Broadband Delivery UK programme reached 95% of premises in December 2017 and is continuing with at least a further 2% likely to be achieved, ensuring that over 97% of premises in the UK can receive superfast broadband.