Meeting Sajid Javid to Discuss Better Local Mobile and Broadband
This week, I had the pleasure of meeting the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport Sajid Javid. As the Cabinet Minister in charge of rolling out broadband and improving our mobile phone signals, it presented me with an opportunity to push home a major priority for Richmondshire and Hambleton: better connectivity.
The reasons for this are clear. Families must be able to stay in touch, rural businesses should be able to export all over the world and everybody must be able to call an ambulance at all times.
A great deal of progress has been made already. Using Government and local funding, North Yorkshire County Council will bring high speed broadband to 90% of households in North Yorkshire by the end of 2016. In only the last few months, the Government has also forced mobile phone companies to commit to investing £5 billion by 2017 to improve their networks and reduce areas of no coverage by two thirds.
However, there is no doubt that there is more to be done. It was great to speak with Sajid about how we plan to tackle the ‘final 10%’ over the coming years, and the kind of impact this could have for our fantastic market towns and their businesses. For improving mobile phone coverage, I would support 'National Roaming', allowing our phones to swap between providers the same way they do when abroad in Europe. And as for increasing our broadband coverage the key could lie in investing in new technology like satelite and mobile broadband, as we try to push out to ensure 100% of North Yorkshire can benefit from having access to the internet.