Prime Minister and Digital Secretary praise broadband companies
The Prime Minister and Digital Secretary met with the CEOs of the major broadband organisations today and praised the industry for creating more than 22,000 jobs over the last year. They welcomed the commitment from the organisations to help the nation build back better from the pandemic with gigabit broadband rollout, and underlined the government’s support to help industry’s efforts to connect as many homes and businesses as possible by 2025. The government has increased its forecast and new figures show rollout will reach 60 per cent by the end of 2021 (up from 50 per cent), putting the UK on track to be among the fastest build rates in Europe.
The meeting gave the CEOs and ministers an opportunity to discuss the details of the recently announced Project Gigabit – the £5 billion infrastructure scheme to bring next-generation broadband to the hardest to reach parts of the country. The work that DCMS is doing to remove the barriers to gigabit rollout and Ofcom’s Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review were also discussed.
Attendees included:
• BT – Philip Jansen, CEO
• Openreach – Clive Selley, CEO
• CityFibre – Greg Mesch, CEO
• Virgin Media – Lutz Schuler, CEO
• Gigaclear – Gareth Williams, CEO
• Sky – Stephen van Rooyen, CEO
• TalkTalk – Tristia Harrison, CEO
• Hyperoptic – Dana Tobak, CEO
• Ofcom – Melanie Dawes, CEO
