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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what recent discussions he has had with the Northern Ireland authorities on the roll-out of superfast and ultrafast broadband in Northern Ireland.

Superfast broadband is now available to over 86% of homes and businesses in Northern Ireland. The current publicly-funded superfast broadband roll-out project in Northern Ireland is due to complete this month and will have provided coverage to 41,000 premises. The UK government funding for this project was £7.054 million. Given the scale of the challenge in delivering broadband coverage in Northern Ireland, the UK government allocated a further £150 million for ultrafast broadband in Northern Ireland in the June 2017 funding agreement for Northern Ireland.

The government has regular discussions with the Northern Ireland authorities on both the delivery of the current project and proposals for taking forward new funding.