GoFibre Win Project Gigabit Broadband Rollout Contract for North East Scotland
Edinburgh-based ISP and network builder GoFibre has secured a fourth contract under the UK government’s £5bn Project Gigabit scheme. The new deal is worth £105m (state aid) and will see them expand their gigabit speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover “around” 63,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas of North East Scotland.
Just to recap. The Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit programme is currently working to extend 1Gbps download speeds (200Mbps+ uploads) to reach “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by around 2032. As part of that, GoFibre has already secured three smaller ‘Local’ (Type A) deployment contracts for Teesdale (Lot 4.01), North Northumberland (Lot 34.01) in North England and the Scottish Borders and East Lothian (Scotland Lot 5) area.
The good news today is that they’ve now added a fourth state-aid supported deployment contract, albeit this time covering a much larger area of North East Scotland. But this is quite a large contract to be handing an operator of GoFibre’s size, and it will be interesting to see how well they handle it all. The roll-out itself will include parts of Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Angus, Dundee, Highland, Moray and Perth and Kinross.
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Just to be clear, this deployment contract is being targeted at premises that are not currently expected to be covered by gigabit broadband connectivity via either existing commercial projects or the Scottish Government’s own £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT).
At present, the roll-out plan for this new contract is still rather vague and subject to the usual pre-build engineering surveys, which often takes a few months to reach completion before the final build plan can be confirmed. But the following map does help to show clusters of all the “in scope” premises which were identified for contract procurement (tentative).
The first connections are due to be delivered by Summer 2026.
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GoFibre CEO, Neil Conaghan, said:
“This Project Gigabit contract award is a hugely exciting development for the north east of Scotland, and for GoFibre, transforming broadband connectivity across a substantial region of Scotland.
As a fast-growing Scottish independent broadband company, GoFibre is committed to improving connectivity in rural and hard-to-reach areas and we cannot wait to get started on this major infrastructure project. Building on the back of our Project Gigabit contract award for the Borders and East Lothian earlier this year, it shows GoFibre is at the heart of rural broadband development in Scotland.”
UK Telecoms Minister, Sir Chris Bryant, said:
“Our investment in North East Scotland will overhaul broadband networks in hard-to-reach areas with slower internet speeds, putting an end to annoying buffering, and creating exciting new opportunities for local businesses and communities.
Now the contract is signed, work can begin to deliver internet upgrades that many towns and villages sorely need. It shows how the Prime Minister’s Plan for Change is delivering for people across Scotland, helping to drive economic growth and tear down the UK’s digital divide.”
Customers of the new GoFibre service, once live over the next few years, can expect to pay from £22.50 per month for a 150Mbps (30Mbps upload) package on a 24-month term with an included wireless router, which rises to £33 for their top 1000Mbps (100Mbps upload) plan. The latter also comes with a bonus Wi-Fi extender (this can optionally be taken on other plans at extra cost).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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This is a complete waste of public funds. Many — if not all — of these areas are being covered by the R100 Scotland scheme run by the Scottish Government.
As the article says, the premises being targeted are those that are NOT expected to benefit from R100 (this may include some infill in areas where FTTP may be present, but will not reach 100% FTTP coverage under R100).
The 63,000 (approx) premises included in Project Gigabit are NOT in the scope of R100 – because they were “too rural,” or “too complex” for the level of public subsidy in the R100 programme. They are also too costly for commercial plans. Without Project Gigabit, rural parts of Scotland will continue to be left behind in digital connectivity.
A lot of these homes aren’t too rural but instead are ineligible for R100 as the premises can already access 30Mbps broadband.
The U.K. Government website does state that the Scottish Government has awarded the contract.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/project-gigabit-network-build-contract-north-east-scotland
https://digitalconnectivity.campaign.gov.scot/north-east-scotland
Looking at the map, it appears to be covering rural parts of the North East that the commercial roll-out is not covering.
This is interesting especially as Virgin Media have network in Perth and of course City Fibre built Aberdeen.
I know Go Fibre already did some areas just outside Aberdeen.
Feels like this would have been primed for either City Fibre or VM.
Of course that being said they may have a different strategy right now.
Thinking aloud perhaps Go fibre is acquired by city fibre somewhere down the road. I don’t believe in Scotland anyway there is network overbuild between them happy to be corrected?
Virgin have no infrastructure whatsoever north of Dundee, meaning they have no ability to deploy at the scale needed in Northeast Scotland. CityFibre (as the name suggests) have no real interest in rural broadband, with the 63,000 highlighted premises being classified as very rural. GoFibre is the only player outside of Openreach with the ambition, and existing infrastructure in the rural parts of the lot.
Not strictly true. Nexfibre has been actively building Forfar and Montrose. Whether these builds continue with the latest cut backs remains to be seen.
@ArdacnetAh, thanks for the geography lesson — but I never actually said Virgin Media had network north of Dundee. I mentioned Perth, which is firmly in the GoFibre awarded Lot 4 region, and a valid reference point in the context of potential competition or interest. But sure, let’s pretend I said “Thurso”.
Also, just a tiny correction — Virgin Media does have infrastructure in Arbroath, which last time I checked is north of Dundee. Not a massive footprint (yet), but let’s not let facts get in the way of a sweeping generalisation.
As for CityFibre — yes, the name definitely means they can’t possibly do rural. I mean, I guess we should just ignore all the Project Gigabit rural contract wins they’ve picked up in Shropshire, Hampshire, Suffolk, etc. Maybe someone should tell their strategy team they’re breaking their own name’s rules — or maybe “CityFibre (but sometimes not just cities)” was too long for branding?
But hey — clearly GoFibre is doing important work, no argument there. Just maybe dial back the absolutes when the real-world picture is a little more nuanced.
So let me get this straight. A loss making company with £164m private investment won a contract for £105m? A contract that presumably larger companies with bigger funding arrangements decided was too large/difficult for them to manage. It’ll be interesting to see how they are going to bankroll this.
Let’s not forget it’s not just a case of build a network across NE Scotland, they have to operate all their network locations (and do installations) which means a large pool of employees and contractors for many years to come scattered across Scotland. I don’t see how they will ever make a profit and be sustainable in the long term with investors wanting to see a return.
Will go fibre use their own private ducts and poles so no other provider can use them as part of this deal?
@andy todd
Even if GoFibre builds using their own ducts and poles, no one else can use them unless GoFibre voluntarily opens access, which they won’t. And if they build via PIA (Physical Infrastructure Access) — i.e. using Openreach’s ducts/poles — then it’s Openreach’s infrastructure being shared, not GoFibre’s.
So, short version: no, nobody will be piggybacking on GoFibre’s builds either way — not because of some clever exclusivity trick, but simply because they’re not obligated to offer wholesale access. It’s not Openreach.
In fact, most altnets build closed-access networks unless required otherwise by funding terms. So whether it’s their own ducts or PIA, they’re the only ones using it.
Does this mean that GoFibre will be the only ISP serving these locations, Im in NE Scotland – 6m north up the coast from Aberdeen so this would extend to us, currently with Plus net on a decent FTTC (I can see the exchange from my house :D) been with plus net since my first ADSL connection however long ago that was now.
No direct affiliation to staying with PN, but I was just curious as I have no idea how this works?
LOL – Ignore me – just looked at the earlier links to the Scot gov website, which does state that once the build is completed you will be able to choose your ISP 🙂
Nice to see more public funds deployed to develop skilled cable deployers.
That’s it, don’t expect it to offer a long term vital utility in its current corporate structure.
Consolidation will sadly lead to higher costs for users and bigger profits, if previous experience is repeated, to offshore hq corporate entities and little answerable to UK regulation and interests.
Shame.