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 the adequacy of the broadband speeds in (a) Coventry North East constituency and (b) Coventry.

According to Thinkbroadand (http://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E14000649), currently 99.3% of premises in North East Coventry has access to Superfast broadband. More impressively, 94.9% have access to gigabit capable speeds, up from 2.8% in 2018. This is partially due to the large presence of Virgin Media in the constituency who have 88% coverage with their gigabit capable cable network infrastructure. For context, 34% of the UK has access to Gigabit speeds so this is well above the National average.

In regards to Coventry (https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/E08000026), 98.1% of premises have access to superfast speeds and 90.6% of premises also have access to Gigabit capable broadband.

Around 0.31% of premises are getting less than 10Mbps and so may qualify for the Government's Universal Service Obligation as administered by Ofcom (https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-1/uso).

Note that as well as VirginMedia, both BT Openreach and CityFibre have announced significant gigabit capable fibre rollout plans for Coventry. Here is a recent announcement from CityFibre about their ongoing £60m investment in Coventry https://www.cityfibre.com/news/coventrys-full-fibre-roll-expands-west-city/ and here is a recent update from Openreach https://www.openreach.com/news/coventry-broadband-locations-announced-as-openreach-fibre-build-gathers-pace/