Broadband

(asked on 31st January 2018) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he has taken to facilitate access to superfast broadband for people living in (a) Lewisham Deptford constituency, (b) London and (c) the UK.


Answered by
Margot James Portrait
Margot James
This question was answered on 8th February 2018

According to data from Thinkbroadband (www.thinkbroadband.com) the current superfast broadband coverage (speeds of more than 24Mbps) in the Lewisham, Deptford constituency is 95.5% and in the London Borough of Lewisham it is 97.8%. The Government expects superfast broadband coverage within London to be provided by the private sector and there is therefore no government-funded superfast project. Providers including BT Openreach, Virgin Media and Hyperoptic all have current or planned network coverage within Lewisham.

During 2017 DCMS worked with a number of London Boroughs to ensure proportionate mechanisms are in place to enable access to the highways by broadband providers for network deployment.

Across the UK, the Government and local bodies together are investing £1.7 billion of public money to support vital improvements in broadband services across the UK. Superfast broadband coverage reached 95% of premises in December 2017 – up from 45% in 2010.

For any premises not covered by superfast broadband, as confirmed in our announcement in December 2017, we are pushing ahead with our plans for a Universal Service Obligation (USO) so that by 2020 everyone across the UK will have a clear, enforceable right to request 10 Megabit per second broadband.

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