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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what support his Department provides to broadband customers in urban areas who are unable to access fibre-to-the-cabinet, where Openreach has no plans to make such services available and whose premises are above the connectivity thresholds in the universal service obligation.

The government is committed to delivering nationwide coverage of gigabit-capable broadband as soon as possible by encouraging network build by Openreach and a range of alternative competing networks. Gigabit broadband will provide customers in urban areas with access to faster and more resilient broadband.

To support this objective, we are taking action to remove barriers to the commercial roll out of faster broadband. For example, we have introduced legislation into Parliament to make it easier to connect tenanted properties where there are unresponsive landlords. In addition, we have plans to mandate connectivity in new builds, and are working with the Department for Transport to reform the streetworks regime to make it quicker and easier to deploy new networks.