Sponsored Links

Accuracy of "scotlandsuperfast.com" (R100 rollout)

grim_reaper

Member
Hi guys,

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with "www.scotlandsuperfast.com"? I basically would like to know how accurate the information on there is.

We have just purchased a lovely piece of land in the Scottish countryside, currently with no fibre. I have approached Cerberus, and Openreach can do a FTTP build for £40k. It's a BIG chunk of money and as the route would only pass 4 other properties, even if everyone would jump on board (which I'm sure they won't) it would still be around £8k / property.

I was just about to register for some R100 vouchers, when I got the following message on scotlandsuperfast.com:

New gigabit-capable connections are being built in your area and your address is in the R100 contract build plan – it's part of the Scottish Government’s Reaching 100% (R100) broadband programme.

Build schedule

Your property has passed the first stage in the build process – a survey has been completed by our delivery partner Openreach. Based on the current engineering schedule we estimate that your address is in scope to receive its connection by the end of June 2025.

Watch our video to find out more about the different stages of your R100 build.

What’s coming?

All of the planned R100 contract build in the South and North of Scotland, and all remaining build in Central Scotland, will be gigabit-capable – this is more than 30 times faster than the original Scottish Government commitment to deliver 30Mbps.

As much of the technology delivered will go beyond the original superfast commitment, the engineering works will take time and scheduling may change from time-to-time due to a number of factors including engineering and planning constraints, as well as the upcoming delivery of Project Gigabit in Scotland. Use the address checker for regular updates on your planned build.

Our website also contains a variety of guidance, from common questions and guidance on how to improve your current speeds to videos explaining the R100 programme and some of the challenges associated with delivering a £600m digital infrastructure build.

Ofcom’s site shares tips on how to improve your internet connection or mobile coverage as well as checking broadband and mobile speeds and coverage for any UK address.

Now it will take us at least 12-18 months before our build is complete and we are ready to move in, so June 2025 would be more than early enough for this. My main question is how much we can trust this info? The reason I'm questioning this is because if I use the OR fibre checker, it tells me the opposite:

Right now this property can’t access Full Fibre on our network and is in an area where we currently don’t have any major plans to build. This could change in the future and we'll let you know if we plan to start building in this area or Full Fibre becomes available under a smaller build programme.

The FTTP build would also take around 12-18 months to complete, so if we want this to be ready for when we move in, we would have to also order it now.
Forking out £40k for FTTP, just for 'regular' fibre to then become available anyway, would of course be a huge waste of money, so I'm a bit unsure on what to do atm. :-/

Any advice is greatly appreciated!
 
The Scotland Superfast website will be more accurate than the openreach checker, which only tends to focus on the commercial builds. I could see on https://roadworksscotland.org that there’s a lot of planned roadworks in rural areas of Aberdeenshire and Moray over the next 6 months [maybe other areas as well, but i wasn’t looking too hard], and probably more to be added as the build progresses.

Once they begin to build your exchange area under the R100 scheme, the openreach checker may update to say that they are building in the area, but thats not a guarantee since that checker is primarily for commercial builds.

In short, ignore the openreach checker for R100: the scotlandsuperfast website will be more useful in this regard. Spending £40k would not be a healthy use of funds and even then, Openreach will probably reject the order because of R100, and even if it will be painful, you could use a 4G mobile broadband package [check available service providers to see who has the best signal strength first!] until they deploy the new full fibre service [though if your move in date is after the completion of the build work, you wouldn’t need to do this]
 
I checked my central edinburgh postcode on this website and apparently "superfast" broadband is available so there are no further plans.

I thought they were promising gigabit broadband in central scotland?

My address, despite being right in the centre, has no plans under openreach or cityfibre to get full fibre broadband.

At least i'm on top of an EE 5g mast, so i'm getting 500+ mbps through my 5G smart hub. I had to cancel my old bt superfast 2 contract, as it was constantly disconnecting due to the old phone line to my property.
 
Sponsored Links
Thanks so much guys for all the useful Info!

Our plot is about 40min. from Edinburgh (near Linlithgow) but unfortunately 5G/4G are extremely poor (around 3-5Mbit down / 0.5-1Mbit up) so not really useable as an alternative.

But I shall ignore the OR checker then and will just bank on the R100 information to be accurate. From what I can tell from your responses, is that even if they don't make the June 2025 date, fibre should be coming at some point.

We won't be able to move in before December 2025/January 2026 anyway, so if it is still being build by then, I might just get myself Starlink for the interim then ;-)

cheers
 
I checked my central edinburgh postcode on this website and apparently "superfast" broadband is available so there are no further plans.

I thought they were promising gigabit broadband in central scotland? My address, despite being right in the centre, has no plans under openreach or cityfibre to get full fibre broadband.
R100 is primarily for the hardest to reach areas, which are mostly rural locations rather than cities. Everywhere in Edinburgh City would almost certainly be provided with full fibre under commercial builds. The couple of exchanges in the city that don’t presently have any full fibre [or a limited amount of it] are currently being built atm [and which will probably progress a little into Q1 2025], but because of the location, this can be quite costly [both financially and in terms of available time to conduct the works].

I would put your post code into the Openreach checker and see what exchange you are connected to, as well as check the surrounding area on the road works scotland website [link above] to see what build progress is looking like.

Thanks so much guys for all the useful Info!

Our plot is about 40min. from Edinburgh (near Linlithgow) but unfortunately 5G/4G are extremely poor (around 3-5Mbit down / 0.5-1Mbit up) so not really useable as an alternative.

But I shall ignore the OR checker then and will just bank on the R100 information to be accurate. From what I can tell from your responses, is that even if they don't make the June 2025 date, fibre should be coming at some point.

We won't be able to move in before December 2025/January 2026 anyway, so if it is still being build by then, I might just get myself Starlink for the interim then ;-)

cheers
Ah thats unfortunate that 4G/5G aren’t very available there. I would also look at any possible altnets that might have been built in your area [Virgin Media, possibly YouFibre or similar]: you can check your post code for more detailed “live” areas on https://bidb.uk as well if it helps to provide a bigger picture :)
 
My exchange build has been "complete" since 2022. But there has never been any work on my street or any of the surrounding streets either... they replaced the pavements last year which would have been a perfect opportunity to put in full fibre cables too, oh well.

Checking my address on openreach says full fibre "not available yet" with no indications on when it will be built.

1727865491830.webp
 
My exchange build has been "complete" since 2022. But there has never been any work on my street or any of the surrounding streets either... they replaced the pavements last year which would have been a perfect opportunity to put in full fibre cables too, oh well.

Checking my address on openreach says full fibre "not available yet" with no indications on when it will be built.

View attachment 19632
That sounds like a case of "uh, we've realised this is going to be too costly for the time being so we'll leave it"
 
Sponsored Links
Top
Cheap BIG ISPs for 100Mbps+
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Vodafone UK ISP Logo
Vodafone £24.00 - 26.00
150Mbps
Gift: None
NOW UK ISP Logo
NOW £24.00
100Mbps
Gift: None
Plusnet UK ISP Logo
Plusnet £25.99
145Mbps
Gift: £50 Reward Card
Large Availability | View All
Cheapest ISPs for 100Mbps+
Gigaclear UK ISP Logo
Gigaclear £17.00
200Mbps
Gift: None
Community Fibre UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Virgin Media UK ISP Logo
Virgin Media £22.99
132Mbps
Gift: None
Hey! Broadband UK ISP Logo
150Mbps
Gift: None
Youfibre UK ISP Logo
Youfibre £23.99
150Mbps
Gift: None
Large Availability | View All
Sponsored Links
The Top 15 Category Tags
  1. FTTP (6026)
  2. BT (3639)
  3. Politics (2721)
  4. Business (2439)
  5. Openreach (2405)
  6. Building Digital UK (2330)
  7. Mobile Broadband (2146)
  8. FTTC (2083)
  9. Statistics (1901)
  10. 4G (1816)
  11. Virgin Media (1764)
  12. Ofcom Regulation (1582)
  13. Fibre Optic (1467)
  14. Wireless Internet (1462)
  15. 5G (1407)
Sponsored

Copyright © 1999 to Present - ISPreview.co.uk - All Rights Reserved - Terms  ,  Privacy and Cookie Policy  ,  Links  ,  Website Rules