Culture Secretary Karen Bradley vows that all homes and businesses will soon benefit from high-speed broadband
Her comments come after dozens of MPs released a report calling for the urgent introduction of an automatic compensation scheme for broadband consumers
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Your support makes all the difference.Karen Bradley, the Culture Secretary, has said homes and businesses across Britain will soon benefit from high-speed broadband amid warnings that millions are receiving poor connectivity.
Revealing that BT has put forward an offer to voluntarily provide the service – delivered through Openreach – Ms Bradley said her final decision “will be about making sure we get the best deal for consumers”.
Her comments come after dozens of MPs released a report calling for the urgent introduction of an automatic compensation scheme for broadband consumers.
The MPs wrote that while broadband is increasingly considered to be as essential as utilities such as water or gas, the quality of customer service “has simply not caught up with demand”.
In the report – Broadband 2.0 – it is claimed that as many as 6.7 million UK broadband connections may not receive download speeds above the Government’s proposed minimum of 10 megabits per second (Mb/s).
Less than half of all UK connections are thought not to receive superfast speeds of 24Mb/s, according to the group’s research. The Digital Economy Act defined a minimum broadband download of 10 megabits per second earlier this year.
But the Government has said that BT’s proposal means many premises would receive substantially more speed and connections quicker than through a regulatory approach.
Considering the two options, Ms Bradley said the Government is “taking action” to ensure that people everywhere in the UK “can get a decent broadband connection as soon as possible”.
“We warmly welcome BT’s offer and now will look at whether this or a regulatory approach works better for homes and businesses,” she said.
“Whichever of the two approaches we go with in the end, the driving force behind our decision-making will be making sure we get the best deal for consumers.”
BT chief executive Gavin Patterson said: “We are pleased to make a voluntary offer to deliver the Government’s goal for universal broadband access at minimum speeds of 10Mbps.
“This would involve an estimated investment of £450m to £600m depending on the final technology solution. This investment will reinforce the UK’s status as the leading digital economy in the G20.
“We already expect 95 per cent of homes and businesses to have access to superfast broadband speeds of 24Mbps or faster by the end of 2017.”
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