Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

Waiting for Digital Scotland’s 2nd Fibre Broadband Extension Contract

Monday, Jan 4th, 2016 (8:33 am) - Score 742

The Digital Scotland project has today announced that 500,000 additional premises have now been put within reach of BT’s “high-speed fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) network, but there’s still no sign of the expected second contract in order to help expand coverage beyond the current target(s).

The £410m project is predominantly working with BT and aims to roll-out its new connectivity to 85% of Scottish premises by the end of 2015 March 2016 and 95% by the end of 2017/18; once complete some 750,000 premises should have benefited.

However it’s worth noting that the coverage target for the Highland and Islands (HIE) region alone is still just 84% by the end of 2016.

Digital Scotland’s Phase 1 Contract Funding

HIE – The Highlands and Islands (£145.8m):
• £126.4m from public bodies (Scottish Government, Broadband Delivery UK [£50.83m], Highland and Islands Enterprise and all seven local authorities in the project area)
• £19.4m from BT.

RES – The Rest of Scotland (£264m):
• £157m from public sources (Scottish Government, ERDF, Broadband Delivery UK [£50m], and all 27 local authorities that form part of the Rest of Scotland Project area)
• £106.7m from BT.

The expanded coverage has, for example, so far benefited more than 81,000 premises in Aberdeen city and shire; 70,700 in the South of Scotland; 34,500 in Fife, 18,300 in Perth and Kinross; 76,000 premises in Glasgow and the West; 102,000 in the Highlands and Islands and 19,800 in the Scottish Borders among other locations.

Overall more than 2,200 new FTTC street cabinets have been built and BTOpenreach’s engineers have laid more than 5000 km of fibre optic cable. On average each week the programme reaches another 7,000 premises. By our reckoning today’s news means that around 80% of Scotland should now be with be able to order a “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) service.

Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said:

We made good progress with the expansion of Scotland’s fibre-based infrastructure in 2015, we’ve reached 500,000 premises with another 250,000 to be reached in the coming months. In total, more than 1.9 million Scottish premises can now get connected to high-speed broadband on our open network, with a wealth of choice in cost and services.”

Stuart Robertson, Director of Digital at HIE, said:

Availability of fibre broadband for homes and businesses in the Highlands and Islands has grown by over 55 per cent since 2014 and is expected to reach at least 84 per cent by the end of this year.

We’re delighted that the partnership investment has brought better broadband to people in over 100 towns and villages previously missed. Every connection is vital to those living and working here and we’re already looking at the options to reach even further.”

So far so good, although it’s interesting to note Stuart Robertson’s remark about “looking at the options to reach even further“. Scotland has yet to sign a Superfast Extension Programme (SEP) contract like most of the rest of the United Kingdom, which is despite the Broadband Delivery UK programme committing an extra £20.99m to the country in 2013 (this will be matched by the Scottish Government).

On top of that BT has more recently confirmed that it will be able to return £17.8m in clawback (gain share) for a reinvestment boost (here) and there’s also the possibility of additional funding being found from other sources, such as the EU. The original plan was simply to extend the existing Digital Scotland project with BT, but so far this hasn’t happened and if an extension doesn’t take place then the Scottish Government would have to open the contract up to the wider market.

The last Open Market Review of Scotland’s superfast broadband connectivity, which was run at the end of 2014, suggested that around 230,000 premises could still be waiting for a superfast service to become available once the current contract completes (plus 51,000 needing basic broadband of at least 2Mbps). Many of those will also be reflective of some increasingly remote, sparse and thus expensive to reach communities.

Sadly much of Scotland is rural, thus outside of the big towns and cities the job does become very slow and difficult, which might well make it difficult for even BT to achieve Digital Scotland’s goal of achieving “world-class digital connectivity” by 2020 (whatever that means).

Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and .
Search ISP News
Search ISP Listings
Search ISP Reviews

Comments are closed

Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £24.00
132Mbps
Gift: None
Shell Energy UK ISP Logo
Shell Energy £26.99
109Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £15.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
YouFibre UK ISP Logo
YouFibre £19.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
BeFibre UK ISP Logo
BeFibre £21.00
150Mbps
Gift: £25 Love2Shop Card
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (5472)
  2. BT (3505)
  3. Politics (2524)
  4. Openreach (2291)
  5. Business (2251)
  6. Building Digital UK (2234)
  7. FTTC (2041)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1961)
  9. Statistics (1778)
  10. 4G (1654)
  11. Virgin Media (1608)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1451)
  13. Fibre Optic (1392)
  14. Wireless Internet (1386)
  15. FTTH (1381)
Promotion
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms , Privacy and Cookie Policy , Links , Website Rules , Contact
Mastodon