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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what discussions her Department has had with BT and Openreach on pilot projects to utilise fibre laid above ground via existing utility poles, especially in rural areas of Scotland.

Ministers regularly discuss a wide range of issues with BT and Openreach.

The use of utility infrastructure to deploy telecommunications fibre has been made easier by the Communications (Access to Infrastructure) Regulations 2016, which transposed the EU Broadband Cost Reduction Directive to UK law. This ensures that digital communications providers can access other providers’ physical infrastructure, across a range of sectors, on fair and reasonable terms.