Digital Scotland Brings More FTTP Broadband to Rural Communities

The £442m (public and private investment) Digital Scotland (DSSB) project with BT (Openreach) is continuing to expand and in the final stages we’re seeing a lot more Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based “ultrafast broadband” (100Mbps+) reaching rural parts, most recently around Lanarkshire and Aberdeenshire.

So far the DSSB project has extended the coverage of so-called “fibre broadband” (i.e. really a mix of mostly slower hybrid fibre FTTC and a little ultrafast full fibre FTTP) services to a total of 930,000 premises and as a result nearly 95% of Scotland now has access to a “superfast broadband” speed of 24Mbps+ (this is not an automatic upgrade, you have to order it from an ISP).

Last year we reported that strong take-up of the new service by consumers (50%+ in related areas) meant that the programme was expected to reach 60,300 more premises than originally planned. The reason for this is because public money returned by BT via clawback (gainshare) could be reinvested to further boost coverage (here), which meant that the existing contract(s) would continue to run until September 2019.

The latest official update states that Openreach’s DSSB rollout will now continue in every local authority area during 2019 and even into 2020 (no specific completion date is given). What’s more is that many of the extended deployments are making much more use of ultrafast FTTP instead of older and slower FTTC (VDSL2) services, which is in keeping with the UK Government’s wider “full fibre” centric strategy.

For example, in North Lanarkshire residents of Shotts, Cumbernauld, Greengairs and Kilsyth have recently been connected to FTTP and most of the deployments to Auchengray, Biggar, Carnwarth, Carstairs, Hamilton and Larkhall in South Lanarkshire have used the same technology. Over in Aberdeenshire it’s a similar story for parts of Ellon, Inverurie, Kemnay, New Deer, Portlethen and Whiterashes.

Robert Thorburn, Partnership Director for Openreach (Scotland), said:

“We’re working hard to bring better broadband to as many people as possible, going much further than expected after beating original targets. Across Scotland, an extra 60,000 premises will benefit.

Our engineers are now reaching increasingly remote communities as well as boosting coverage across North Lanarkshire. The arrival of full fibre broadband in places like Greengairs will be life changing for residents and businesses. The use of full fibre, where it’s the best solution, puts those households ahead of the curve for years to come.”

The on-going deployment is to be welcomed, although it’s worth pointing out that the Scottish Government’s follow-on £600m Reaching 100% (R100) programme (i.e. aspiring to ensure that nearly everybody can access 30Mbps+ speeds by the end of 2021) is running well behind schedule and won’t even select its supplier(s) until the end of this year (here), which raises a rather big question mark over that 2021 date.

On the upside a recent report from Analysys Mason forecast that the DSSB project could create a total benefit to the Scottish economy of £2.76bn over 15 years (here).