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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that broadband customers in rural Northern Ireland have access to equivalent speeds as customers in the rest of the UK.

Currently over 85% of premises in Northern Ireland have access to superfast broadband and this is expected to increase to 87% by the end of March 2018 as a result of the Government’s Superfast Broadband Programme. The Government has allocated a further £150 million to support ultrafast broadband roll-out as part of the June 2017 funding support package for Northern Ireland. For any premises that do not have access to superfast broadband the government will give everyone in the UK a legal right to request a connection of at least 10Mbps by 2020. The Better Broadband Scheme is also available now to enable all premises to have access to a connection speed of at least 2Mbps today.