BT Deploys “Fibre Broadband” to 170,000 Extra Premises in Scotland

The £409.8m state aid supported Digital Scotland programme has announced that 170,000 additional homes and businesses in Scotland can now gain access to “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) Internet connectivity thanks to their joint efforts with BTOpenreach, which is up sharply from the 150k reported in November 2014.

Overall the current programme aims to ensure that 85% of Scottish homes and businesses can access BT’s “fibre broadband” network by the end of 2015, while the Highland and Islands (HIE) region alone anticipates that it will only reach 84% by 2016. The latter is understandable given HIE’s predominantly rural terrain.

Thankfully more money is currently being allocated for upgrades beyond the completion date(s) and it’s hoped that “around” 95% of premises in Scotland should have access to the service by the end of 2017 (total of around 750,000 additional premises). But sadly we still have no idea what % will receive the required “superfast” speeds of 24Mbps+.

Digital Scotland’s Current Funding

The Highlands and Islands (£145.8m):

• £126.4m from public bodies (Scottish Government, Department for Culture, Media and Sport [BDUK], Highland and Islands Enterprise and all seven local authorities that form part of the project area)
• £19.4m from BT.

The Rest of Scotland (£264m):

• £157 million from public sources (Scottish Government, ERDF, Department for Culture, Media and Sport [BDUK], and all 27 local authorities that form part of the Rest of Scotland Project area)
• £106.7 from BT.

In related news ISPreview.co.uk and Patrick Cosgrove recently revealed that take-up of premises catered for under the ‘Rest of Scotland’ project stood at just 5.81% and in the HIE region it was 6.7% (here).