Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that rural communities remain connected following the digital switchover.

The digital switchover is an industry led programme. Customers in rural communities will not have their landlines migrated to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) without an available stable internet connection (VoIP only requires a minimum speed of 0.5mbps).

The Government has taken several initiatives to boost rural connectivity and mobile coverage throughout the UK, including Project Gigabit, the Shared Rural Network deal with the industry, and publishing the Wireless Infrastructure Strategy 2023.