BT’s “Fibre Broadband” Network in Scotland Reaches 1.5 Million Premises

The national UK telecoms operator, BT, has today announced that their “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC) network is now available to 1.5 million homes and businesses across Scotland, which is up sharply from 1 million in April last year.

The figure is predominantly made up of coverage delivered via BT’s own £2.5bn commercial UK investment, while around 220,000 homes and business have also been reached through the state aid supported Digital Scotland programme.

Some of the most popular areas in Scotland for FTTC services are Glasgow (173,000 premises passed), Edinburgh (152,000), Aberdeen (98,000), Dundee (56,000) and 26,000 in Inverness.

As part of all this BT said that their Openreach engineers have already laid 4,500Km (2800 miles) of new fibre optic cable and built more than 4,700 new green roadside street cabinets, with the roll-out being unsurprisingly dominated by their up to 80Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology.

John Swinney, Deputy First Minister for the Scottish Government, said:

“The fact that over 1.5M people now have access to fibre broadband is another positive piece of news. The scale of delivering fibre broadband across our communities in Scotland shouldn’t be underestimated and this announcement shows how hard engineers are working.

We are still in the early stages of the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme, and without it thousands of Scottish homes and businesses simply wouldn’t have had access to high-speed technology.

It’s a fundamental part of the Scottish Government’s aim to deliver world class connectivity by 2020, enabling people across Scotland to connect any time, any place, anywhere using any device.”

Brendan Dick, BT Scotland Director, said:

“BT has been a driving force in transforming Scotland’s broadband landscape, passing another 10,000 households with the technology every week last year. We’ve recruited hundreds of extra engineers and invested hundreds of millions of pounds through our own commercial fibre broadband programme and the Digital Scotland partnership.

Today is a major milestone in Scotland’s digital revolution. Access to secure, high-speed communications will drive the future economic prosperity of our country. It’s vital that people embrace the digital revolution and make the most of the new infrastructure. Together with our partners, we will continue to work to meet Scotland’s ambition of delivering world class connectivity by 2020.”

The £410m Digital Scotland project with BT aims to ensure that “fibre broadband” services are available to 85% of premises by the end of 2015 and 95% by the end of 2017/18, although as usual it’s not clear precisely what proportion of these premises will actually receive “superfast” (24Mbps+) download speeds.

Digital Scotland’s Current Funding

HIE – 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.

RES – 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.

It’s also worth pointing out that the coverage target for Scotland’s Highland and Islands (HIE) region alone is currently just 84% by 2016, which is reflective of the regions challenging rural geography with its smaller and more isolated communities.