Chi Onwurah – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Chi Onwurah on 2016-02-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, pursuant to the Answer of 22 February 2016 to Question 26900, if he will request that Ofcom publish an assessment of the extent to which the indicative assessment of BT’s ducts in the report, Telecoms infrastructure access – sample survey of duct access, published in March 2009, was borne out in the subsequent rollout by BT of superfast broadband.

Mr Edward Vaizey

It is a matter for Ofcom as the independent regulator to consider whether the benefits of conducting and publishing such an assessment are proportionate to the costs.

On 25 February Ofcom published the initial conclusions of its Strategic Review of Digital Communications, including its strategy to promote large-scale roll-out of new ultrafast broadband networks.

As part of that, Ofcom has said it will ask Openreach to provide a new database showing the physical location and characteristics of all of its ducts and poles, and to provide greatly improved systems and processes for access to them. This will allow competing operators to invest, plan and lay advanced networks. Ofcom will be working closely with industry to drive this forward over the coming months.