A TORY minister was left red-faced during an interview after his own dodgy internet connection undermined his boasts about government investment in broadband.
A minister suffered connection problems during a radio interview to announce the UK Government’s advances in providing gigabit-capable broadband.
Broadband minister Matt Warman’s line failed shortly after he spoke about the “huge progress” in rolling out hyper-fast, gigabit-capable broadband across the UK.
'This is handy - you're the broadband minister and you can't hear me.'@NickFerrariLBC brands it 'sensational' after the Digital Minister's line cuts out during an interview about a new £5bn project to upgrade broadband... pic.twitter.com/msB5AzvZBW
— LBC (@LBC) August 30, 2022
The unfortunately timed technical hitch prompted LBC’s Nick Ferrari to remark: “This is handy as you’re the broadband minister. You can’t hear me, can you? That is sensational and the picture’s frozen.
“So there we go, we’ve got the Government banging on about however many billion pounds’ worth it is of … gigabit and he can’t take the question.
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“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 has risen from 9% to 70% 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% 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.”
Asked if the whole of the UK was connected, he replied: “Well, in some form, all bar the most remote properties are connected to broadband of some sort and satellite can mop up the rest, but there is a lot of work to do.
“I’m not pretending anything else, but as I say, the pace that’s got us to where we are today is a huge sign of intent and the things that are to come …
"The vast majority of the … progress that we’re announcing today is coming from the private sector.”
On Tuesday, the outgoing premier will visit north Dorset, where work is kicking off on the first major contract under the Government’s Project Gigabit.
Boris Johnson said he was “proud” of the expansion and that it demonstrated “levelling up”.
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