Tom Elliott – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Tom Elliott on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate she has made of the proportion of households in Northern Ireland with access to superfast broadband.

Matt Hancock

At the end of Phase 1 (March 2016) 82% of premises in Northern Ireland had access to superfast broadband. This will increase to just under 87% following Phase 2 (December 2017). The Northern Ireland Broadband Improvement Project team is taking forward a contract change request to extend coverage further with £1.7 million of gainshare funding that has been returned by the supplier as a result of higher than expected take-up. There will be further gainshare funding over the seven year term of the contract which will become available to support further additional coverage. Furthermore, the UK Government is committed to a new broadband Universal Service Obligation, so every premise in the country will have access to broadband at a minimum speed, and our ambition is that this is 10Mbps.