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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent assessment he has made of the speed of the delivery of superfast broadband to urban areas and progress in resolving black spots of coverage.

The Superfast Broadband Programme focuses on providing coverage to ‘white areas’ as defined by State aid, where there is currently no superfast availability. ‘Grey areas’ have coverage of one provider and ‘black areas’ have coverage of more than one provider.

Superfast coverage in urban areas continues to improve with investment predominantly made by the commercial sector. In Ofcom’s report in June 2014 the proportion of UK urban premises able to receive NGA broadband services was 85%.

Ofcom’s report on Fixed-line broadband is available at: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/telecoms-research/broadband-speeds/broadband-speeds-may2014/