Rural Broadband
Debate between Rory Stewart and Anne Marie Morris(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
Those were two very important and effective interventions. Mobile telephone coverage is better in Kabul than in Cumbria. Any of us who travels around Europe will find that the coverage is much better in the Norwegian fjords than it is in Cornwall or Wales. That really matters for us.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I endorse what my hon. Friend says about coverage. In Devon, my part of the world, 9% of people have either no coverage at all or less than 2 megabits per second, which is horrendous, and 22% of rural businesses say that without superfast broadband, they are going to move nowhere fast, so it is imperative that we take action on that.
Rory Stewart
I thank my hon. Friend very much. On the point about mobile coverage, the statistics on coverage are very dodgy. In the Ofcom consultation document, there is a shocking paragraph in which it says, “We do not have the methodology to work out exactly what the current coverage is in rural areas and therefore it is difficult for us to factor into the auction what the economic benefits will be of achieving 100% coverage in rural areas.” Therefore, Ofcom is saying that it is likely to push ahead with a lower coverage obligation, not on the basis of any research but on the basis of an assumption that research would be difficult and that the results would be unquantifiable. I do not think that anyone in this Chamber thinks that that would be acceptable.