Government minister’s connection fails during radio appearance praising high-speed broadband rollout

Matt Warman, UK Parliament/Richard Townshend

A government minister has suffered connection problems during a radio interview to announce advances in providing gigabit-capable broadband.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport minister Matt Warman’s line failed this morning, shortly after he spoke about the “huge progress” in rolling out the technology across the UK.

LBC host Nick Ferrari said on air: “You can’t hear me, can you? That is sensational, and the picture’s frozen. There we go, we’ve got the government banging on about however many billon pounds’ worth it is of… gigabit and he can’t take the question. You can’t hear me but I’ll be polite, Matt Warman, minister for digital, culture, media and sport, talking about the progress of broadband and the line collapses, but thank you for your time.”

Earlier in the exchange, Warman said the proportion of people accessing gigabit-capable broadband had risen to 70 per cent in the last three years.

He said: “That is huge progress at a pace that was way above what we were hoping for when we set those targets in 2019, so really good news, but of course there are still 30 per cent of people that we are working as fast as we possibly can to get to – and that pace shows that we’re going to get to them as quickly as we possibly can.”

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