Openreach Build to 7 New Areas Under Scotland’s Project Gigabit Broadband Scheme

Network operator Openreach (BT) has issued a progress update on their £157m (public subsidy) Project Gigabit contract for the ‘Rest of Scotland’ area (here), which originally aimed to upgrade 65,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural areas to full fibre (FTTP) broadband and has just started building across several new locations.

According to the latest June 2026 data from the Government’s Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency (here), Openreach is currently contracted to cover 77,640 premises under this contract (aka – Call Off 6) and has already completed the build to 5,680 of that target (2,000 premises were added in the last month alone, so it’s ramping up).

The network operator has now started extending their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) lines across several seven new locations under this contract, including Patna, Kilcreggan and Cove, Muirkirk, Kippen, Fintry, Strathblane and Blanefield. More locations will follow in the future, as the full contract also includes some of the remotest places in the Highlands, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, Argyll and Bute, as well as parts of Central and South of Scotland.

The work is designed to complement the Scottish Government’s own £700m R100 programme, which is separately working with Openreach to reach another 113,000 premises in hard-to-reach rural locations by 2028 (the vast majority of this will get FTTP) and they’ve technically already done c.100,000 premises (here). On top of that GoFibre also hold a few Project Gigabit contracts for different parts of Scotland (here and here). All of this is on top of existing commercial builds.

Robert Thorburn, Partnership Director for Scotland, said:

“This is a major infrastructure upgrade, so there will be more engineering teams, equipment and vans around town, and we’re working hard to keep disruption to a minimum.

Wherever possible, we’ll use our existing network of ducts and poles to avoid roadworks, new street furniture and disturbance. But there may be places where we need to install new poles, underground ducts and fibre cables because it’s the only way to make sure households get included in the upgrade.”

Scotland’s Business Minister, Tom Arthur, said: “It’s great to see Project Gigabit working alongside our R100 programme to bring fast and reliable broadband to homes and businesses across Scotland”, while the UK’s Telecoms Minister, Liz Lloyd, added: “Whether it’s families streaming together, farmers being able to use new technology, or businesses reaching more customers online, this upgrade creates real opportunities for people.”

The new service, once live, can be ordered via various ISPs, such as BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone and more (Openreach FTTP ISP Choices) – it is not currently an automatic upgrade, although some ISPs have started to do free upgrades as older copper-based services and lines are slowly withdrawn. But it’s important to reflect that Openreach won’t always reach 100% of premises in every location they target on the first pass.