Digital Economy Act 2017

Overview of the Act

Reproduced verbatim from the Explanatory Notes published with the Act on legislation.gov.uk (Crown Copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0). Explanatory Notes are prepared by the responsible government department and are not part of the Act.

This Act implements a number of policies outlined in the 2015 Conservative Party Manifesto. The Act contains measures related to providing a broadband universal service for the United Kingdom, granting additional powers to Ofcom in respect of information provision, consumer switching and automatic compensation in relation to communication matters, a new Electronic Communications Code and other communications infrastructure matters, introducing better controls on online pornography and protecting citizens from nuisance calls, digital intellectual property, powers to share data between public authorities and some measures relating to the BBC.

The Act aims to enable access to fast digital communication services for citizens and businesses, to enable investment in digital communications infrastructure, to shape the emerging digital world for the benefit of children, consumers and businesses, and to support the digital transformation of government, enabling the delivery of better public services, world leading research and better statistics.