Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment she has made of whether mobile providers will reach the target of providing voice and text services to more than 90 per cent of the UK landmass by the end of 2017.

The regulator Ofcom is responsible for assessing and enforcing the compliance of Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) with their licence obligations to provide voice and text coverage to at least 90% of the UK landmass, alongside Telefonica's (O2's) licence obligation to provide 4G coverage to 98% of the UK population by the end of 2017. Ofcom will assess on the MNOs' compliance in early 2018. It is also a matter for Ofcom to report whether the MNOs met these obligations and it can issue fines to MNOs that fail to meet their licence obligations.