PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Telecommunications: Rural Areas (23 February 2015)

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the combined effect of poor mobile phone signal and poor broadband provision on rural communities and businesses.

Asked by:
Jesse Norman (Conservative)

The Government recognises the importance of a good broadband and mobile connectivity to rural communities and businesses. We are meeting the challenge by:

• Rolling out superfast broadband to over 40,000 premises a week and investing £10m to develop options for the most remote areas;
• Tackling mobile partial not-spots through an agreement with mobile network operators that is legally binding and guarantees £5bn commercial investment by 2017. Each operator will cover 90% of the UK’s landmass, halving partial not-spots and cutting complete not-spots by almost two-thirds;
• Investing £150 million to bring mobile services to remote areas of the UK with no mobile coverage.

Answered by:
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Conservative)
26 February 2015