Deidre Brock – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Deidre Brock on 2016-05-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate his Department has made of when all exchange-only lines will have access to fibre broadband.

Mr Edward Vaizey

The vast majority of phone lines across the UK connect to the nearest telephone exchange via a street cabinet, which can be upgraded to deliver fibre broadband. Estimates are not available of the number of premises served by exchange only lines and therefore when they will all have access to fibre broadband. Exchange only lines present a greater engineering challenge to deliver fibre broadband than those connected via street cabinets but technical solutions are available; one solution is to rearrange the existing network, lay new cables to reroute lines to new cabinets – a technique developed as part of the BDUK Superfast Broadband Programme.