Scotland Restart Gigabit Broadband Rollout Tender for Fife, Perth and Kinross

The Scottish Government (SG) has officially relaunched their proposed gigabit broadband roll-out procurement for Fife, Perth and Kinross. The proposed contract is valued at £28,557,891 excluding VAT and aims to help expand such a network to cover an estimated total number of 17,830 premises in hard-to-reach areas (i.e. those not covered by any other gigabit networks).

Just to recap. The move comes after the SG stopped their previous tender back in June 2025 (here), which originally aimed to find a supplier to deliver on their proposed £43m (state aid) Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme for Fife, Perth and Kinross (Lot 4 – Scotland). This had been expected to help expand full fibre (FTTP) connectivity to an estimated 28,441 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas (i.e. premises in the region that weren’t due to benefit from their existing R100 contract with Openreach)

However, the SG stopped this effort after discovering that “there had been a significant increase in the number of premises which have been delivered to or are now included in commercial build plans” across the same area, which is a nice problem to have. But it also meant that the foundation for the original procurement was now incorrect.

A few months after that, the SG then began canvassing for interest in a revised tender, which was due to go out to procurement during September 2025 (that was highly tentative). The good news this week is that, after a bit of a delay, the SG has now officially re-launched procurement for their Lot 4 tender in Scotland (Fife, Perth and Kinross) – part of the UK Government’s Project Gigabit scheme (Type B – Regional).

The revised tender is valued at £28,557,891 ex. VAT and aims to expand gigabit-capable broadband to 17,830 premises in hard-to-reach areas (usually remote rural). The contract, once awarded, will 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 2030 (tentative).

The SG wants to have all of the tenders or requests to participate back by 11th March 2026 and they’ll then aim to dispatch invitations to tender or to participate to selected candidates on 13th May 2026. The catch is that these are all estimated dates and they can sometimes slip by a few months, particularly when the contracts involve complex rural areas.

Several broadband operators are known to have a presence in the contract area, including Openreach, Virgin Media (inc. nexfibre), Hyperoptic, Netomnia, GoFibre, CityFibre and Highland Broadband. But we think Openreach or GoFibre are probably among the most likely candidates, given their current involvement with Project Gigabit.