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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of his Department's ability to meet the universal service obligation for superfast broadband coverage in Hampshire.

The Universal Service Obligation was set in secondary legislation in March 2018 and is now being implemented by Ofcom so that by 2020 everyone will have the legal right to high speed broadband of at least 10Mbps. It is designed as a safety-net to ensure no-one is left behind.

In terms of superfast broadband coverage, thanks to £1.7bn investment of public money in the Broadband Delivery UK Superfast programme, 95% of Hampshire now has access to at least 24 Megabits per second.

We also have ambitions for full fibre coverage, which will deliver future-proof broadband connections. We announced £200 million of funding in the Budget to trial a model to deliver full fibre to premises in rural and remote areas. This is the first step of an ‘outside-in’ approach which seeks to ensure rural areas will be connected at the same pace as the rest of the country.