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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what penalties will be enacted if mobile providers do not achieve coverage of 90 per cent of UK landmass coverage 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.