Written question asked by Alan Duncan (Conservative) on Wednesday, 6 December 2000, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Tuesday, 12 December 2000. It was answered by Patricia Hewitt (Labour) on Tuesday, 12 December 2000 on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry.

Dept of Trade and Industry

Question: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, what assessment he has made of the extent to which rural communities will be able to benefit from British Telecom's planned provision of ADSL Internet access. - Including figures.

Answer: Mr. Duncan: To ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what assessment he has made of the extent to which rural communities will be able to benefit from British Telecom's planned provision of ADSL internet access. [141664] Ms Hewitt: BT has already rolled out ADSL to exchanges covering nearly 40 per cent. of the population. Subject to commercial considerations, it intends to upgrade exchanges covering 70 per cent. of the population by the end of 2002. ADSL will however not work where the end user is more than 3-4 km from the local exchange, which means that it will not be available to everyone. There are other methods of high speed internet access becoming available, including satellite which has the potential to cover the whole country.

Secondary information