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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to improve digital infrastructure and connectivity in rural areas.

The government is committed to delivering lightning-fast, reliable broadband to everyone in the UK. ‘Project Gigabit’ is ambitious, challenging and central to how we build back better. Our plan - to stimulate investment, bust barriers and drive competition - is working. We are on track for one of the fastest rollouts in Europe and for 60% of all households to have access to gigabit speeds by the end of the year. It is a huge leap forward from 2019, when it was 9%.

We are backing Project Gigabit with £5 billion so hard to reach communities are not left out - starting to level up now, not waiting for the end of the commercial rollout, and building on the half a half a million rural homes and businesses already connected through our support.

As part of Project Gigabit we are funding up to £210 million worth of vouchers over the next three years to help with the costs of installing gigabit to people’s doorsteps and up to £110 million to connect up to 7,000 rural public buildings such as GP surgeries, libraries and schools. All premises not covered through these measures or expected to be addressed by commercial coverage will be in scope for new Project Gigabit contracts.

Premises which can’t access a decent broadband connection remain eligible for the broadband Universal Service Obligation (USO). The broadband USO was launched in March 2020 and gives every eligible premises the legal right to request a decent, affordable broadband connection, providing download speeds of at least 10 Mbps and upload speeds of 1Mbps.

Furthermore, on 9 March last year, the government agreed a £1 billion deal with the Mobile Network Operators to deliver the Shared Rural Network. This will see the operators collectively increase 4G mobile phone coverage throughout the UK to 95% by the end of the programme, underpinned by legally binding coverage commitments. The programme will level up the country by improving mobile coverage for an extra 280,000 premises and 16,000km of roads with areas around the UK starting to see improvements to 4G coverage long before the programme completes.

On 29 June we announced the next step of the Shared Rural Network so people who live and work in rural areas will be able to see how 4G coverage will increase through this world leading programme.