Digital Scotland Delivers 900,000 Superfast Broadband Premises

The £428 million Digital Scotland (DSSB) project with BT (Openreach) has announced that their roll-out of FTTC and FTTP based “superfast broadband” ISP technology has managed to reach an additional 900,000 homes and businesses across Scotland since it began.

The update itself doesn’t really add much new information to what we already knew, although they do update to say that around 4,500 new FTTC (VDSL2) based street cabinets are now live and more than 11,800km of optical fibre cable has been laid by engineers from Openreach, who are continuing work on the project into 2019 (25,000 premises are planned for the Highlands and Islands); mostly funded by gainshare/clawback and savings from high consumer take-up in the initial contract.

Some of the most recent locations to go live include parts of Cortachy in Angus; Dunscore in Dumfries and Galloway; and the rural village of Forgue, Aberdeenshire, are now able to receive “fibre broadband” (FTTC/P) for the first time. Openreach also said that they will be using more ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) technology in the final stages.

As a result of all this, as well as separate commercial deployments (e.g. Virgin Media), it’s estimated that nearly 94% of premises across Scotland can now order a “superfast broadband” (24Mbps+) capable connection (note: the upgrades are not automatic for consumers).

Michael Matheson, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Connectivity, said:

“Fast and reliable internet is absolutely vital to communities across Scotland. It helps businesses stay connected with customers and colleagues, and helps families learn, work, play and shop.

That is why it was fantastic to visit Andrew from Scarletts Honey today and learn about how the infrastructure, delivered as part of the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme, has made such a difference to the day-to-day running of the business.

The Scottish Government is not stopping there. Our Reaching 100% programme, backed by an initial £600 million investment, plans to deliver superfast broadband access to every home and business in Scotland by the end of 2021 – the only part of the UK to do so.”

Robert Thorburn, Fibre Partnership Director for Openreach, said:

“The Digital Scotland project and our hard-working engineers have delivered more coverage at faster speeds than expected. As we mark another major milestone, it’s fantastic that work will continue into 2019 thanks to extra funds generated through innovation, partnership efficiencies and strong take-up.

Hundreds of the latest properties passed by the new network can now connect to the most reliable and fastest residential broadband available as we’re using more Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) to help these harder-to-reach homes join the digital revolution.

Good connectivity is essential to a strong local economy and lets people live, learn, work and build businesses locally. We’re proud to be a partner in helping communities across Scotland reach their digital potential.”

You can find more information about the Scottish Government’s £600m pledge to bring “superfast broadband” (defined in the next contract as 30Mbps+) access to all premises via their future R100 project here and here, which is currently trying to pick from a selection of suppliers (e.g. BT, Gigaclear etc.) and could complete by the end of 2021 or March 2022 as a financial year.