Broadband

(asked on 5th July 2022) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to deliver full-fibre and gigabit-capable broadband by 2025.


Answered by
Matt Warman Portrait
Matt Warman
This question was answered on 11th July 2022

The Government is delivering the biggest broadband upgrade in UK history. Currently, 69% of UK premises can access gigabit-capable broadband, continuing a rate of incremental growth in line with meeting the target of at least 85% gigabit-capable coverage across the country by 2025. This is not the limit of our ambitions and we will continue to work closely with the industry to get close to complete gigabit coverage as quickly as we can thereafter.

To support this, we are investing £5 billion through Project Gigabit so hard-to-reach areas can get ultra-reliable gigabit speeds. We have already upgraded coverage to over 600,000 premises, and we have over half a billion of pounds of contracts out for tender right now.

In addition to our Project Gigabit contracts, we are investing up to £210 million in the Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme to support rural communities with the cost of installing new gigabit-capable connections.

We are also providing funding to connect rural public buildings like schools, GP surgeries and libraries. We recently announced a joint £82 million investment with the Department for Education (DfE) to connect up to 3,000 eligible schools to lightning-fast gigabit broadband.

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