Digital Scotland Reveals Expansion Plan For Superfast Broadband

Digital Scotland has announced that some 145,000 Scottish homes and business will be the next in line to get high speed fibre connections, in the latest phase of its Superfast Broadband programme.

The scheme is actually a year old this month, and over 200 new locations will see fibre rolled out to them next. In the last year, a total of 3,400km of cable has been laid hooking up some 275,000 premises already.

The new locations encompassed by the project include many more rural areas that desperately need better broadband service, such as Braemar in Aberdeenshire, Portpatrick in Dumfries and Galloway, along with Voe in the Shetland Islands.

Edinburgh and West Lothian, North Ayrshire and Falkirk communities will also see the arrival of juicy fibre speeds – these mostly FTTC connections (of up to 80Mbps downloads, and 20Mbps uploads) will start to go live from autumn 2015. Some lines won’t run via cabinets, though, and will instead run direct from the exchange to homes and businesses (to make for even faster speeds).

Sara Budge, Programme Director for Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband, commented: “It is great to be celebrating the first year of deployment of the £410 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme, while announcing that more exchanges will be included, with areas such as Portpatrick in the south of Scotland and as far north as Voe in the Shetland Islands being able to connect to fibre broadband for the first time.

“The project is developing a high speed fibre network which is changing the face of broadband. By reaching out to those who would not have been covered through the commercial market – in towns and into some of our most rural areas – we are ensuring that the connections which are made will bring many benefits to the Scottish people at home and in business.”