Home
 » ISP News » 
Sponsored Links

FTTP Broadband Arrives on Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles

Wednesday, Dec 19th, 2018 (12:55 pm) - Score 2,854

A number of Scotland’s most remote new build home developments, specifically some of those taking place on Orkney, Shetland, Islay and Isle of Lewis, have become some of the first to benefit from a new roll-out of Openreach’s (BT) 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology.

Openreach can install FTTP free of charge to all new housing developments of 30 or more homes, but they’ve also reduced the cost for smaller housing sites of between 2 and 29 properties by more than three quarters (here). Naturally several property developers in more remote areas have started to make use of this (e.g. Orkney Builders Limited, E&H Building Contractors Ltd, Macleod Construction Ltd and Calmax Construction).

The new deployments are commercial but build on the core fibre optic infrastructure and £27m of new subsea cables that were laid several years ago as part of the Digital Scotland (DSSB) project (here). As a result some 32 new houses on Orkney, as well as 30 houses and 16 flats on Shetland (rising to 80 homes in the future), 20 houses on Islay and 50 premises on the Isle of Lewis can now or will soon be connected via “full fibre“.

In the grander scheme of things this may seem like a small deployment (Openreach plan to reach 3 million premises by the end of 2020 and possibly 10 million by c.2025), but that overlooks the big challenges involved with bringing FTTP to such areas. The Shetland project alone involved the installation of more than 1,300 metres of cable along the main A970 between Lerwick and Sullom Voe to the site’s entrance.

Andrew Hepburn, Openreach’s Fibre Delivery Director for Scotland, said:

“We’ve been honing our skills on full-fibre rollout in places like Altnaharra in Sutherland. New, more efficient techniques and equipment we tried out there are now helping us to deliver full-fibre networks to other rural places.

We’ve cracked some challenges to bring FTTP to these island sites, like shipping out specialist equipment to Shetland to blow the delicate, glass fibres through underground piping. When you buy a new home, you expect the best of everything – and residents will find their new homes are among the best-connected in Scotland.

FTTP provides an unbeatable service for residential broadband,with lots of capacity for data-hungry services and applications, and it’s also great for businesses, giving them all the bandwidth they need to max their online operations and future growth. We’re on a mission to bring decent broadband to everyone in Scotland, and we’ve recently dropped our wholesale prices to help stimulate the fibre broadband market.”

Overall engineers have installed around 5,900 metres of new core fibre cabling to reach the new sites, which in theory could in the future also help to spread the ultrafast broadband connectivity to other nearby areas. This marks a welcome change from the older and slower Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) or even ADSL services that have tended to dominate such areas.

Tags: , , ,
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
6 Responses
  1. Avatar photo Anthony Rees says:

    Excellent news

  2. Avatar photo NGA for all says:

    Fantastic. Great to see. I hope this was good re-use of some of the subsidised elements already paid.

  3. Avatar photo Luch says:

    Still waiting in Wales in many areas.

    1. Avatar photo CarlT says:

      There remains more FTTP in the arse end of nowhere than in cities proportionately. This was a new build and nothing to do with BDUK. I am sure the taxpayer will get to you when they can.

    2. Avatar photo Mike Kiely says:

      CarlT I am sure it uses the submarine cable, the handover point and at least the aggregation node paid with subsidies. Peculiar if it did not.

  4. Avatar photo Dominic Adshead says:

    How can they get 1gb internet to the residential properties in the orkneys but not Greater London

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
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £27.99
145Mbps
Gift: None
Zen Internet UK ISP Logo
Zen Internet £28.00 - 35.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Sky Broadband UK ISP Logo
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 (5443)
  2. BT (3497)
  3. Politics (2513)
  4. Openreach (2285)
  5. Business (2242)
  6. Building Digital UK (2226)
  7. FTTC (2040)
  8. Mobile Broadband (1954)
  9. Statistics (1770)
  10. 4G (1648)
  11. Virgin Media (1603)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1446)
  13. Wireless Internet (1384)
  14. Fibre Optic (1384)
  15. FTTH (1380)
Promotion
Sponsored

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