Stephen Timms
Main Page: Stephen Timms (Labour - East Ham)Department Debates - View all Stephen Timms's debates with the HM Treasury
(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
The analyst, Redburn, has pointed out that claims that the UK is doing well on superfast broadband are
“only true using a rather unambitious definition of superfast”.
A number of European countries now have over 20% fibre- to-the-home penetration, with symmetric 100 megabits- per-second services. The Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), told me in a written answer on 23 June that he does not know how much of that we have in the UK, but the industry estimates penetration to be about 0.5%. Surely we need to be doing much better.
Sajid Javid
The right hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that superfast coverage in the UK is the highest among the EU5 countries; it is higher than Germany, higher than Spain, five times higher than Italy and three times higher than France.