Scotland’s R100 Broadband Voucher Scheme Set for Summer

The Scottish Government‘s Minister for Connectivity, Paul Wheelhouse, has confirmed that their new voucher scheme for poorly served areas (i.e. those that cannot access “superfast broadband” 30Mbps+) is set to go live this summer. The scheme will be accompanied by a new online “premises level” eligibility checker.

At present Scotland is busy entering the deployment phase for their £600m R100 (Reaching 100%) programme, which has so far awarded two of its three contracts – Central (LOT 2) and Southern (LOT 3) – to BT (Openreach). Meanwhile an unspecified legal challenge by UK ISP Gigaclear against the proposed award of LOT 1 (North Scotland / Highlands) to BT (here) continues to delay the agreement.

Under the current plan engineers will reach around half of the target premises in both lots – approximately 23,000 in Central and 12,000 in the South – by the end of 2021, with the majority of the build completed by the end of 2023 (a couple of years later than originally planned).

On top of that the R100 programme has also been busy developing a new voucher scheme, although until now we only knew that this would launch “later” in 2020.

Paul Wheelhouse said:
(responding to a question from Edward Mountain MSP)

“As Mr Mountain knows, broadband provision, like all telecoms issues, is a reserved matter. The Scottish Government is intervening to address market failure, and the R100 programme will deliver, although we have clearly been delayed by the current legal proceedings, which we cannot fast track-we will have to wait for their outcome.

I assure Mr Mountain and everyone whom he represents in the Highlands and Islands that they will be eligible for the voucher funding that will be available from this summer onwards. Through the online checker that we are developing to provide information at a premises level, his constituents should be able to tell whether they are eligible for R100 and when it will deliver to their premises. If that is likely to be beyond the end of 2021, they will be able to use the voucher funding to deliver a solution.”

At this stage we still don’t know much about the voucher scheme itself, except for a few bits. Anyone (homes and businesses) who will not be able to access superfast broadband through the R100 programme by the end of 2021 – even if R100 will ultimately reach them – will be eligible for the voucher once it goes live this summer.

The scheme will also allow people to obtain superfast broadband via other technologies than just fibre, such as satellite, fixed wireless access or mobile broadband (4G / 5G). We tend to view the inclusion of Satellite as being somewhat of a weak fix, although if SpaceX or similar companies can ever produce an affordable ultrafast broadband option from their growing network of LEO spacecraft (due to go live soon-ish) then that could become attractive again.