Openreach Expand FTTP Broadband to Half of Scotland – 1.45 Million Premises

Network access provider Openreach (BT) has announced that their UK Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network now covers over 1.45 million properties in Scotland (half of all premises), which has also delivered a strong take-up rate of 38% and at a total build cost of £435 million.

The vast majority of their full fibre build in Scotland – costing an average of £300 per premises passed (unchanged from 2023) – reflects commercial investment, although they’re also covering some areas with support from Broadband Vouchers and the Scottish Government’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project. The latter aims to upgrade another c. 115,000 of Scotland’s hardest-to-reach premises by 2028.

Around 30% of Openreach’s new fibre footprint in Scotland is in rural areas and islanders in Tiree, Iona and Mull are among the latest to be connected through the Scottish Government’s R100 rollout. The new fibre network also reaches over 64,000 Scottish businesses; 1,500 education establishments, 900 hospitals, GP and dental practices; 590 care and nursing homes; 1,400 church and village halls; and 160 emergency and rescue services buildings.

The operator is otherwise still investing up to £15bn to expand the coverage of their full fibre network to reach 25 million UK premises by December 2026 (currently on 17 million+), which includes around 6.2 million premises in rural or semi-rural areas. On top of that, they’ve also expressed an ambition to reach up to 30 million by the “end of 2030“, but this is partly dependent upon a favourable outcome from Ofcom’s next Telecoms Access Review 2026 (TAR).

Katie Milligan, Openreach Chief Commercial Officer, said:

“Fast, reliable connectivity is a game-changer in every part of Scotland. It fuels economic growth and can support the redistribution of economic activity to less populated areas.

This is quite simply one of the most significant infrastructure upgrades Scotland will see this century. We’re paving the way to future job creation, remote work, digital learning, and innovative healthcare access.

We’re proud of the progress our engineers have made – and there’s lots more still to come.”

Work is now continuing in dozens of cities, towns and villages – including Inverness, Perth, Helensburgh, Gourock and Castle Douglas – with Openreach’s commercial build set to start in the island capitals of Lerwick, Kirkwall and Stornoway this year.

The UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme has also separately allocated £450m (here) to help spread 1Gbps broadband speeds into some of the most remote rural areas of Scotland and part of that is expected to be delivered via Openreach. But not all the related procurements have been formally awarded yet.

Openreach highlights how a recent report from Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) and Stantec predicted that their ongoing upgrades to Full Fibre broadband across Scotland could deliver a £4.38 billion boost to the Scottish economy by 2029. But we’ve previously explained why such figures should always be taken with a pinch of salt (here), although it’s definitely a welcome and much needed improvement in many areas.

The service itself, once live, can be ordered via various broadband ISPs, such as BT, EE, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and many more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not usually offered as an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs are doing free upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn.