A HAMPSHIRE village's poor connectivity has been brought into the spotlight by the Winchester MP.
Steve Brine is hoping to solve the village's broadband woes and he brought the poor connectivity in Alresford to the attention of the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport during a recent select committee session.
The historic market town has long suffered with broadband issues, including patchy service, regular outages and slow download and upload speeds.
Mr Brine spoke about the number of constituents who have raised this with him in recent years.
He said: “I have a market town in my constituency, called Alresford, which is a beautiful market town it is not a hard to reach, final five per cent rural community. It is a handful of miles from the capital of Hampshire, Winchester, yet they have some of poorest broadband speeds in my constituency. Will you please help me cut thought that situation?”
In 2013 the government published the ‘Building Digital UK’ programme which over the last nine years has seen super-fast broadband access increased to 97 per cent nationwide.
To build upon this scheme the government has launched a £5bn rollout of gigabit broadband across the UK.
Mr Brine has previously expressed concern that Alresford seems to have been left behind.
The DCMS select committee have regular sessions with the secretary of state, to give members the opportunity to scrutinize the department and it’s work.
This week saw Nadine Dorries return to the commons committee.
She offered to look into the broadband issues and work with the MP to rectify the issues experienced by more than 4,000 residents.
She said: "If your market town doesn’t have its super-fast broadband, I’d be interested to know why."
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