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

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to address poor mobile network coverage in rural communities in Torridge and West Devon.

The agreement announced on 18 December 2014 will improve coverage throughout the UK, and we expect coverage across Devon to improve dramatically. Under the agreement each mobile network operator (MNO) will provide voice and text coverage to at least 90% of the UK landmass by 2017, and we understand that data coverage will improve in many areas. This will lock in £5bn of investment in UK mobile infrastructure, halving partial not-spots and cutting complete not-spots by two-thirds. The MNOs have now made the agreed coverage obligations legally binding, by requesting that Ofcom vary their spectrum licences on a voluntary basis.