Highlands Project Connects 152 Public Sector Sites to Full Fibre

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise in Scotland has announced the completion of a joint £7.7m state aid funded project to build a new gigabit-capable “full fibre” broadband and Ethernet network to connect 154 public sector sites (schools, NHS, council etc.) across Inverness, Fort William, Thurso and Wick. But it’s also fostering FTTP.

The four-year-long project – supported by Capita and CityFibre – was originally backed by an investment of £4.3m from the UK Government’s Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme, while the rest (£3.4m) came from public sector partners in the region (total funding of £7.7m).

The work was primarily orientated around supporting Capita’s Scottish Wide Area Network (SWAN) programme, which was set up some years ago to establish a single shared network and common ICT infrastructure across Scotland’s entire public sector.

Bringing pure fibre optic connectivity to some of the remotest rural towns in Scotland is no mean feat, although the effort has already had a wider impact. CityFibre used it to support an additional private investment of £24.5m, which is helping to expand their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) ISP broadband network to cover the majority of premises in Inverness. Local businesses have also started to see the benefit.

Scott Dingwall, HIE’s Head of Regional Development (Lochaber, Skye and Wester Ross), said:

“We are really pleased to provide additional support for this project to extend enhanced connectivity benefits across the canal in Fort William to Banavie and to Wick Business Park is crucial.

This extension opens up access to businesses in previously out of reach areas and ensures that maximum economic benefit can be levered for them through CityFibre’s high-speed fibre network.”

The fibre optic upgrade reflected a collaboration between the Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Natural Heritage, NHS Highland, the University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) and the Department of Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) using the LFFN Public Sector Anchor Tenancy framework.

However, we note that the rollout of this new fibre network took a fair bit longer than planned. The original announcement envisaged completion by March 2021, thus the work is roughly a year behind schedule, although this is understandable in light of the global COVID-19 pandemic (that hit just as the build was beginning).

We should point out that the original announcement also suggested that homes in Fort William, Thurso and Wick might eventually benefit from a wider FTTP deployment too, although CityFibre has yet to announce a broadband build plan for those areas. But we note that Openreach have confirmed a future rollout plan for all three locations by 2026.

The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme, which is aiming for “nationwide” coverage by the end of 2030, is also expected to help fill in some of the gaps. The Open Market Review (OMR) for this has already begun (here).

UPDATE 10:40am

Correction to the public funding figures, which total £7.7m rather than £12m.