Scotland’s R100 FTTP Broadband Build Tops 24,000 Premises

The Scottish Government has, in response to a Freedom of Information Request, published a useful progress update on their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT), which reveals that 24,194 premises have now been covered by their rollout of a new “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) capable ISP network.

At present 96% of premises in Scotland already have access to such a network and a further 115,000 premises are planned to be covered across the three R100 contract LOTs by March 2028 (here and here). LOT 1 (North Scotland and the Highlands) is expected to cover 60,764 premises (100% via FTTP) by 2027/28, while LOT 2 (Central Scotland) will reach 32,216 premises (95.6% via FTTP and the rest FTTC) by 2023/24 and LOT 3 (Southern Scotland) targets 21,889 premises (100% via FTTP) by 2024/25.

The latest figure of 24,194 premises completed – across the whole of R100 – represents an increase from the 20,000 reported in March 2023 (plus 3,172 connections via vouchers, which is up from 2,800 in March). But there’s clearly still a long way to go and the focus on remote rural areas means that the deployment pace will be fairly slow, although it’s already running years behind the original target of completion by the end of 2021.

However, the new FoI Request – as spotted by Thinkbroadband today, goes further than previous updates by giving both a rundown of the progress by each contracted LOT and by each constituency under the hardest North (LOT1) contract. The data for this is to the very end of May 2023.

R100 Rollout Progress vs Target

R100 Progress – LOT 1 (North Scotland and Highlands)

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear how the UK government’s Project Gigabit funding for Scotland (aka – LOT 39) will be handled, although the first procurements should launch sometime later this year. Some 447,170 premises across Scotland may need support from public funding to help them gain access to a gigabit-capable (1000Mbps) broadband service (here), which could rise if existing plans (inc. commercial builds) fall short.