£700m R100 Gigabit Broadband Rollout in Scotland Covers 100,000 Premises

The Scottish Government (SG) has this morning announced that they’ve just passed the 100,000 premises milestone – reflecting those who have benefitted from their publicly subsidised £697m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach, which is rolling out gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) broadband to remote rural areas.

Starting with a recap. The R100 scheme is contracted to reach a total of 112,939 premises by March 2028 – split across three contracts – in areas that lack access to “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+). The most challenging LOT 1 (North Scotland and the Highlands) area is expected to cover around 61,000 premises by 2027/28, while LOT 2 (Central Scotland) was due to reach 32,000 by 2023/24 and LOT 3 (South Scotland) targeted 22,000 by 2024/25 – the latter two have largely already been achieved.

Just for some wider context. Back in January 2026 some 84% of premises in Scotland could access a gigabit-capable (1Gbps download) broadband ISP network and this falls to 75% when only looking at FTTP technology (here). Ofcom currently predicts (here) that Scotland’s full fibre (FTTP) coverage could reach up to 91% by January 2029, then rising up to 93% for gigabit-capable broadband (FTTP + Hybrid Fibre Coax / cable).

The latest announcement confirms that the R100 programme has now passed the milestone of 100,000 premises, although the actual figure from the subsidised contracts with Openreach is 97,491. The SG have thus reached the new mark by including the figure of 6,239 from premises covered by their complementary R100 voucher scheme (total: 103,730 premises); that’s up from a total of 96,347 premises in January 2026.

The figures below also include a small amount of additional build (aka – overspill), which catches the extra premises that Openreach picks up while working within the same areas on the R100 build (we don’t know how big this is for each area).

Business Minister, Tom Arthur, said:

“Fast, reliable internet is essential for modern life – it supports businesses, enables remote working and helps people access services and stay connected with friends and family. Across Scotland, this investment is already delivering real benefits and transforming lives and livelihoods.

Reaching 100,000 connections is a significant milestone for the R100 programme and our wider investment in Scotland’s digital infrastructure.

We will continue to work with our delivery partners, including Openreach, to maximise the impact of this investment and extend the benefits to more homes and businesses across the country.”

Robert Thorburn, Openreach Partnership Director for Scotland, said:

“This is a fantastic milestone for Scotland. Delivering almost all of these connections, our engineers have worked in some of the most challenging locations to bring full fibre to communities that need it most.

It’s about more than infrastructure – it’s about opening up opportunities and helping rural areas thrive for the long term.”

The R100 roll-out is still ongoing, but Openreach (BT) and GoFibre have long since secured several publicly subsidised Project Gigabit broadband roll-out contracts for Scotland (here, here and here), which will extend FTTP to an additional 139,000 premises in remote rural areas (i.e. focusing on the bits that R100 fails to reach) via an additional public subsidy total of around £288m.

You can see the latest progress for most of those mentioned above over here, although GoFibre’s latest contract for North East Scotland doesn’t yet show, which we assume is because they’re currently reaching the end of the pre-build survey phase (first connections are expected to be delivered sometime this summer).