Angus, Perth and Kinross Benefit from New Full Fibre Network UPDATE

Some 154 rural public sector sites, as well as 650 homes and businesses, across the Angus, Perth & Kinross areas of Scotland are able to benefit from gigabit-capable broadband speeds after BT (Openreach) “completed” infrastructure work on a new “full fibre” network, which was partly funded by the UK Government.

The project is being funded by an investment of £2.7 million from the UK Government (i.e. the LFFN – ‘Local Full Fibre Networks’ programme) and £530,000 from the Tay Cities Region Deal. As part of that, BT were contracted to deploy the connections to rural buildings and Neos Networks (formerly SSE) are delivering the project in Perth.

Back in 2020 Neos revealed that their side of the contract would build on their established regional network infrastructure using 5.4km of Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA) ducts, as well as 3.9km of existing Perth & Kinross Council assets (here). But we should clarify that today’s announcement only seems to focus on the BT side of the contracted build.

Angus Council leader, Councillor David Fairweather, said:

“This investment brings major benefits to residents and businesses as we expand the fibre connectivity across Angus.

The recent lockdowns over the past two years have demonstrated the importance of technology and internet connectivity. Faster internet connections enables critical public services and healthcare providers to improve the services they are providing, whilst enhancing learning, particularly during periods of learning at home, e-commerce, home working, remote socialising and entertainment.”

Gillian Lane, Account Director for BT in Scotland, added:

“Connecting more communities, schools and health centres to the fastest connections possible over our ultrafast fibre broadband network will make a huge difference to people across Angus. As a major employer in the region, our colleagues and their families live and work in these communities and they are proud to be playing their part in helping public sector organisations to transform the services they can offer their citizens.”

End.

UPDATE 14th March 2022

We’ve now got a rough map of the properties connected to FTTP from Openreach as a result of the project. The difference between BT’s delivery and that of Neos is that there will be no community benefit from their (mainly urban) delivery, whereas the BT Group delivery brings faster speeds to more addresses (many of whom will have only ADSL/FTTC today).