Rural Broadband and Mobile Coverage

If the hon. Lady will wait for one second, I want to use this opportunity—[Laughter.] I want to echo my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border—it is quite clear that most hon. Members want to be like him—by thanking my own officials, Mark Swarbrick and Simon Towler, who have done an astonishing amount of work on this issue. Such is their dedication that they even took the photographs for the superfast broadband document that we published in December. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) will be interested to hear that I want to pay tribute not only to the work of Broadband Delivery UK, which was set up by the previous Government and comprises an excellent team of dedicated officials from the private and public sectors, but to the telecoms regulator, Ofcom. I know that we will be discussing the auction in a matter of moments. Ofcom is very ably led by Ed Richards, who also has a fine team. I have embarrassed the hon. Lady on many occasions, but the fact that she could say, ““I'm from Ofcom”” was a stamp of great quality, and she now brings adornment to the House. Anyway, I seem to have persuaded her not to intervene on me. On the 25-megabit target, our target of having the best superfast broadband in Europe is of course dependent on a range of measures, including choice, coverage, speed and take-up. Competition is also very important. It is all very well for an hon. Member to mention that Uzbekistan has better coverage than the UK—that sounds like a bit of a slight to Uzbekistan, although I am sure that that was unintended—but it is worth remembering that Uzbekistan has a population of 5 million people, and effectively one mobile broadband provider. If we want to encourage competition, which will encourage choice, innovation and low cost, we will also have to acknowledge that the Government cannot direct and demand how broadband is rolled out. The hon. Member for Wrexham pointed out that we expect two thirds of the country to be covered by private sector investment, with BT and Virgin clearly in the lead, along with some small network operators. As so many hon. Members were keen to praise far-flung places all over the world for their broadband, let me be the champion of British business and British broadband providers. Every three months, BT puts down a fibre network equivalent to that of Singapore. BT, a British company, is rolling out broadband at twice the pace of Deutsche Telekom, twice the pace of AT&T and twice the pace of Verizon. That is something that we should be very proud of. BT recently announced that it expects to offer an 80 megabit service next year, while Virgin already offers a 100 megabit service. I do not want to sound too patriotic because we also welcome the intervention of Fujitsu, which has plans to bring fibre connections to 5 million rural homes. The key to this debate is supporting those areas where the market will not deliver. We have already announced four pilot areas, including the one represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border—it was more than life was worth not to have his constituency as one of the pilot areas, although it was, of course, I emphasise, an independent decision—along with North Yorkshire, Herefordshire and the highlands and islands. [Interruption.] Well, we all know about the discussion of Herefordshire and Wales that took place in the House a few months ago. We will announce the next wave of pilots next week. As the hon. Member for Wrexham pointed out, this is indeed where government gets difficult, because we will have to say no to a few. Let me offer a crumb of comfort to those who may get bad news next week. From now on, we shall be working on a first-come, first-served basis. We will not announce a third and fourth wave; any local authority whose bid is not accepted can sit down with Broadband Delivery UK, work through the bid to find out where the gaps are and then come forward again when it is ready. It will be a rolling process. We also recently announced the creation of a rural community broadband fund, which is expected to be worth up to an additional £20 million—above and beyond the £530 million we have made available. I am conscious of time and I am anxious to talk about mobile voice and mobile broadband. I understand the issue. In rural Oxfordshire, in the village close to Wantage where I live, I have to stand in the middle of the road to get mobile coverage. When I was candidate before the 2005 election, simply getting my constituents connected to the internet was a high priority for me. I pay tribute to the work of community broadband groups, which many hon. Members have mentioned, as their ability to galvanise enthusiasm and put forward solutions is important, encouraging other operators to take an interest and see that provision of rural broadband can be profitable. Broadband Delivery UK is taking a technologically neutral approach to solutions; mobile broadband is a potential solution for hard-to-reach areas. We want to see partnerships between fixed, mobile, wireless and satellite operators to compete for the available funds. I emphasise that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. A couple of my hon. Friends mentioned the benefits of satellite technology. I am lucky enough to have the National Space Centre in my constituency, so I would be more than happy to see a satellite solution. We have to be realistic, however, about what satellites can deliver. They will be a complementary technology, but they certainly do not provide a one-size-fits-all solution. The key issue—and, I think, the key reason why my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border called this debate—is the auction that is about to take place for the 800 MHz and 2.6 GHz spectrum, and the coverage obligations put forward in Ofcom's initial outline of how the auction will take place. I remind hon. Members that this is being consulted on; it is not fixed in stone. This debate will be important not just for the Treasury to watch, but for Ofcom, which will give serious consideration to any representations, along with appropriate evidence, on whether to increase the coverage obligation attached to the 800 MHz licence. It is important that robust evidence is made available. Let me make it absolutely clear to hon. Members that the auctioning of spectrum is not a money-raising exercise. In fact, under European rules, it is not appropriate to auction spectrum simply to raise the maximum revenue possible. Ofcom has to take into account a whole range of different factors, including the investment capacity of operators. It must also undertake a cost-benefit analysis of whether the coverage obligations are inappropriately expensive. It is important that Ofcom's consultation is seen to be open, transparent and robust. One thing that I have learned in government is that the constituency of mobile and telecoms operators with which I deal comprises not only with some of the most fantastic British companies, but some of the most litigious. If my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border could have done any additional work in marshalling his forces for this evening's debate, it would have involved conveying to the chief executive of each company, in no uncertain terms, his and his colleagues' view that we must get on with the auction, and that any attempt to disrupt it through litigation could set back the auction and therefore the roll-out of spectrum. I have deliberately avoided being partisan in my speech, but I must express disappointment about the interventionist approach that I consider the last Government to have taken in regard to the spectrum auction. I believe that if they had simply left it to Ofcom, we would have reached the end of the process before the present Government had even come to office. We should bear in mind the changes that are taking place in the UK mobile market and in technology. I had the privilege of visiting Alcatel-Lucent recently to observe the technology that it is developing in Swindon. It is good to see inward investment taking place there. Technologies such as femtocells—which, essentially, provide small base stations in the home or office—will radically improve indoor coverage, and will give users better coverage. The hon. Member for Wrexham made a valid point in his critique of the Government's policy in regard to local authority bids. I think that local authorities are best placed to lead the bids, but it is important to remember that Broadband Delivery UK sits behind the bidding process,. It is able to advise local authorities on procurement, and assesses bids partly on the basis of the capacity of a local authority to deliver in terms of its personnel and expertise. The more such bids are made and the more individual local authorities engage in procurement exercises, the more other local authorities will have an opportunity to learn from the process. Let me end by reminding the House that Rome was not built in a day. We must bear in mind the capacity of the private operators and companies that will deliver superfast broadband. I believe that we have adequate sums to support it, but I take the concerns expressed by Members on both sides of the House very seriously. We are working as hard as we can, given the constraints within in which we operate, to deliver good superfast broadband to as many people as possible by 2015.