Scotland Tenders for £43m Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Fife, Perth and Kinross

ISPreview has spotted that the Scottish Government (SG) yesterday published a contract notice for the Fife, Perth and Kinross (Lot 4 – Scotland) area under the UK’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme, which is expected to expand full fibre (FTTP) connectivity to an estimated 28,441 premises in hard-to-reach (rural) locations.

Firstly, it’s important to point out that the SG is already working to expand FTTP coverage in these areas as part of their existing £600m Reaching 100% (R100) contract with Openreach (BT), which is due to reach completion by 2027/28. But this will still leave some premises unserved by gigabit-capable broadband, and that’s where the follow-on Project Gigabit scheme is likely to help fill in the gaps.

The new £43.14m (state aid) Project Gigabit procurement for Fife, Perth and Kinross (Lot 4 – Scotland) is currently targeted to be awarded to a supplier in September 2025 (estimate) and will then remain in force for approximately 11 years – comprising a build period of approximately 4 years, followed by an operational period of at least 7 years. “It is the intention that the build period will be completed by the end of 2029,” said the contract notice.

The area is already home to a number of gigabit broadband providers, with Openreach being the most dominant and Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre) also having a limited presence, albeit more in the Fife area. After that, there’s also a little coverage from Hyperoptic, Netomnia (Brsk), GoFibre and Lothian Broadband, with CityFibre being nearby but not really encroaching much into the intervention area itself.

At this stage it’s unclear which of those players would have an interest in placing a serious bid, while Openreach have tended to avoid Type A/B (Local/Regional) contracts in favour of Type C (Cross-Regional) ones (Lot 4 is ‘Regional’), but this one might make more sense as a complement to R100.

Similarly, Virgin/nexfibre hasn’t really shown much of a serious interest in Project Gigabit contracts, and neither has Netomnia, although CityFibre might have some interest and GoFibre too if they were able to secure enough funding to support it. But it would be a challenging build for anybody to take on.

UPDATE:

Added mention of GoFibre, which I overlooked on the first pass.