BT completes £350m upgrade of Scotland Wide Area Network to 5,000 sites UPDATE

Over three years have passed since the Scottish Government (SG) and PSD Scotland awarded BT a £350m contract over 6-years to upgrade the Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN). The build phase has now completed, which means that over 5,000 sites (hospitals, GP surgeries, councils, pharmacies etc.) can now benefit from faster and more reliable connectivity.

The deal complements BT’s investment in future-proofing its infrastructure and accelerating full fibre broadband and 5G mobile connectivity to some of the most remote parts of Scotland. The contract itself – supported by Openreach and a range of delivery partners – has allowed for better communication, data sharing and collaboration across thousands of sites.

Over the past 12 months alone, BT and its partners are said to have completed some of the most technically demanding stages of the programme, including major fibre builds and transitions across complex public sector environments. The work has often involved transitioning live critical and national services, requiring close coordination and specialist engineering expertise.

Moving forward, BT said they will continue to work closely with Public Services Delivery Scotland (PSD Scotland) and Scotland’s public sector organisations throughout the remainder of the contract to enhance the SWAN service, support evolving customer requirements and deliver ongoing improvements in network capability, resilience and security.

Ishbell MacPhail, Head of BT Business, Scotland, said:

“This is an important milestone for BT and for the organisations that rely on SWAN every day to deliver vital public services. From healthcare and emergency response to schools and local government, better connectivity helps teams share information more effectively, collaborate more easily and support people in communities across Scotland.”

This programme stands out not only for its scale, but for the complexity of delivering major network upgrades while critical services continue to operate. By working closely with partners across the public sector, we are helping to build a secure and resilient platform that can support innovation and improved services long into the future.”

Tom Arthur MSP, Minister for Business and Fair Work, said:

“The successful upgrade of digital connectivity at more than 5,000 public sector sites across Scotland is a significant achievement.

Reliable digital connectivity is increasingly essential to the delivery of public services. Through the £350 million SWAN contract, awarded by NHS Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government, BT and public sector organisations working in partnership have helped provide the robust and dependable digital infrastructure that they rely upon to serve communities across the country.”

SWAN is intended to provide a secure and resilient platform for Scotland’s public sector, enabling new and improved ways of delivering services, including “virtual healthcare, remote diagnostics and more modern contact centre operations and supporting technologies including voice, video, cloud connectivity and secure remote access“.

One thing worth mentioning is that the original announcement touted connectivity for “over 6,000” sites, while today’s one talks about it being “over 5,000” and it’s unclear why there’s been such a big fall. But we assume some or all of the missing c.1,000 will be reached as the 6,000 figure is still mentioned on the official website.

UPDATE 1:39pm

Apparently the first c.5,000 purely reflects upgrades to existing sites, which leaves c.1,000 new sites that will now be reached through expansions.