Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of trends in changes to broadband download speeds (a) regionally and (b) between urban and rural areas since 23 March 2020.
The Ofcom Connected Nations report is published every 6 months. From this data we can see that as of May, 14.5% of the UK currently have full fibre broadband available. 15% of urban properties have full fibre broadband available. 12.4% of rural properties have full fibre broadband available.
Currently Thinkbroadband (http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/uk) shows that 27.2% of premises across the UK have access to Gigabit capable broadband, however it does not provide a urban/rural split. This is up from 18% in March 2020.
A breakdown of Full Fibre service by region is as follows:
| Jan 2020 | May 2020 |
East Midlands | 8.7 | 10.1 |
East of England | 6.6 | 8.6 |
London | 15.4 | 18.5 |
North East | 4.1 | 5.2 |
North West | 10.2 | 12.0 |
Northern Ireland | 39.5 | 47.4 |
Scotland | 10.2 | 12.8 |
South East | 9.3 | 10.8 |
South West | 14.2 | 16.8 |
Wales | 13.3 | 15.3 |
West Midlands | 11.8 | 13.7 |
Yorkshire and The Humber | 19.5 | 22.0 |