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 potential merits of strengthening future license conditions for the 5G spectrum auction in order to improve telephone and data signal in remote parts of the UK.

The regulator Ofcom is responsible for enforcing spectrum licence obligations and it is assessing whether mobile network operators have met their licence obligations that were agreed in 2014. Ofcom plans to publish its assessment in early 2018. In 2017 the Government granted Ofcom new powers to issue fines to mobile operators in the event that they do not meet their licence obligations.