Nicholas Soames – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Nicholas Soames on 2016-09-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what estimate her Department has made of the proportion of registered farm businesses which have access to superfast broadband.

Dr Thérèse Coffey

The Government is investing £780 million in superfast broadband. This will enable 95% of homes and businesses, including those based on farms, to have access to superfast broadband by the end of 2017. Clawback from contracts could extend this further. Standard broadband of at least 2Mbps was made available to everyone by the end of 2015, enabling digital access to all public services, and superfast broadband is now available to over 90% of UK premises – up from 45% in 2010. We are looking at superfast solutions for the last 5%. Farmers will also benefit from the broadband Universal Service Obligation which we are working to introduce by 2020, with an ambition that this will be set at 10 megabits per second.