Digital Scotland’s fibre broadband roll-out hailed
The £410 million Digital Scotland project has delivered fibre broadband to more than 120 locations across the country since April, including Kemnay in Aberdeenshire, Sumburgh in Shetland and Selkirk in the Scottish Borders.
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Hide AdMany of the 150,000 homes and businesses, including 30,000 in the Highlands and Islands, are now able to connect to the service for the first time.
So far, engineers have laid around 188 miles of sub-sea cable and 1,500 miles of cable on land - enough to stretch from Shetland to Land’s End in Cornwall and back again - and installed around 600 new street cabinets to house connections.
Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “Today marks another significant step for Scotland and the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband partnership. This is the fastest roll-out of its kind anywhere in the UK, passing 150,000 premises in record time - an engineering feat of the kind for which Scotland is renowned.”
She added: “As well as the project being available in urban areas that weren’t previously covered by fibre broadband, like Dyce in Aberdeen, it is also reaching rural communities, such as Cullen and Aberlour in Moray, who will benefit greatly from the business opportunities fibre broadband brings. Across Moray as a whole, one in two homes and businesses can now choose to connect to fibre broadband.
“We are still in the early stages, but already thousands of Scottish homes and businesses are able to take advantage and sign up. They simply wouldn’t have had access to high-speed technology without this ambitious partnership project.
“It’s fundamental to the Scottish Government’s aim to deliver world class connectivity by 2020, enabling people across Scotland to connect any time, any place, anywhere using any device.”
The project is being funded by the Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, the UK Government through Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), local authorities and the European Regional Development Fund as well as BT.
The Digital Scotland roll-out, which began in April, consists of two projects - one covering the Highlands and Islands area and the other covering the rest of Scotland, with both being delivered on the ground by BT.
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Hide AdFibre broadband enables multiple users in a home or business to access the internet, download and share large files at the same time and more quickly than ever before.
BT Scotland’s fibre programme director Liz Mallinson said: “The Digital Scotland projects constitute a massive civil engineering challenge. A lot of the early work has been in planning, surveying and building central infrastructure.
“So it’s really a remarkable achievement to see fibre broadband services already reaching 150,000 homes and business premises in more than 120 communities, and this is just the start for many of these locations as engineers continue work on local upgrades.
“Hand in hand with our commercial rollout, it means around 1.4 million Scots can now access fibre broadband on the Openreach network. The speed at which we’ve reached today’s milestone is a testament to the commitment and determination of our engineers, who keep Scotland connected day in and day out. They’ve completed the bulk of this work in just seven months, reaching today’s milestone faster than any other broadband partnership roll-out in the UK.”
Alongside commercial roll-out, around 95 per cent of premises in Scotland are expected to be able to connect to fibre broadband infrastructure by the end of 2017/18 as part of the Digital Scotland programme.
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