Superfast Broadband Boost

Thousands of homes and businesses across Scotland are to benefit from superfast broadband.

67 locations are to get fibre broadband, including Aberdour, Limekilns, Newburgh and Newmills. It's part of the latest phase of the £410 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.

The locations, from Wick and Thurso in Caithness to Maybole and Tarbolton in South Ayrshire, are spread across 13 Scottish local authority areas. The first premises in these locations are expected to benefit from fibre broadband during Spring 2015.

Local people will have access to fibre services at speeds of up to 80Mbps1, thanks to the engineering rollout being delivered on the ground by BT's local network business, Openreach.

As part of today's announcement, the programme will reach 15 new communities in the Highlands and Islands, extending into Caithness for the first time. The West of Scotland also gets a big boost, with more than 40,000 premises across the city of Glasgow, Renfrewshire, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire and Dunbartonshire set to benefit.

Most places, such as Aberdour, Ballachulish, Banchory, Bishopbriggs, Dalmally, and Govan, will receive high speed technology for the first time, while others will see additional premises connected as a result of building upon their existing, or planned, fibre broadband networks. A full list of locations is below.

The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme aims to provide fibre broadband infrastructure to areas not covered by commercial deployment. Combined with commercial roll-out plans by the private sector, around 85% of premises in Scotland will have access to fibre broadband by the end of 2015/16 and 95% by the end of 2017/18.

Nicola Sturgeon, Deputy First Minister, said:

"This latest announcement marks another important milestone for the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband partnership.

"The scale of the challenge of delivering fibre broadband across our communities in Scotland shouldn't be underestimated but engineers are working hard and making good progress. One major component, the huge sub-sea project to lay cables out to the islands, is now largely complete. It,s also fantastic to see the project extending into places like Joppa in East Ayrshire and Spean Bridge in the Highlands which will benefit greatly from the economic advantages fibre broadband brings.

"We are still in the early stages of this ambitious partnership project, but it is already delivering for thousands of Scottish homes and businesses who simply wouldn’t have had access to high-speed technology without it.

"It's a fundamental part of 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."

BT is investing £126 million in the partnership programme, in addition to its £2.5 billion UK commercial rollout of fibre broadband. The advance of the partnership roll-out, coupled with BT's ongoing commercial upgrades, means that more than 1.3 million Scottish homes and businesses now have access to Openreach’s fibre broadband network.

Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said: 

"The arrival of fibre broadband in these latest communities will be great news for local homes and businesses. In a few months' time local people will be streaming, shopping, learning and sharing faster than ever before. Fibre broadband opens up lots of new online opportunities, whether you’re a busy mum juggling work with homework, a commuter wanting to work from home or a business contemplating moving functions to the cloud.

"The civil engineering project underpinning this new network is not just one of the biggest in Scotland but is among the most complex anywhere in Europe. Openreach has been recruiting dozens of extra engineers to help shape Scotland’s future and many of our young apprentices are gaining valuable experience helping to connect up people to fibre in local communities across Scotland."

UK Government Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey said:

"The UK Government is investing more than £120 million in the transformation of Scotland's digital landscape, and today's announcement of the next 80,000 homes and businesses in Scotland due to benefit from the rollout of superfast broadband is fantastic news."

The full list of locations being announced today is as follows: