Broadband reach cash

Extra £15.6m to be invested

Perth and Kinross will see more superfast broadband coverage for homes and businesses thanks to the early success of the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) project.

Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Constitution Derek Mackay announced this week that strong takeup figures mean that an additional £15.6m is being re-invested back into the programme.

The Digital Scotland rollout consists of two projects – one covering the Highlands and Islands area and the other covering the rest of Scotland.

Across Scotland, more than 710,000 premises are now able to connect to fibrebased services through the Digital Scotland project, led by the Scottish Government and delivered on the ground by Openreach, BT’s local network business.

Thanks to strong early take-up of fibre broadband, BT has made available additional funding under the contract earlier than planned.

lt means that many places, such as premises currently in very rural areas or those not benefiting from any uplift in speed, as well as ‘new build’ premises built between 2012 and 2014, will now be able to get superfast broadband thanks to the programme.

Work is already under way and will be complete by December 2018 – it will mean that 90.5% of Perth and Kinross will have access to fibre broadband including assumed commercial coverage by this time.

Mr Mackay said: “I am delighted that more premises than originally planned in Perth and Kinross will now have the opportunity to benefit from reliable broadband.

“We are already looking at how we reach further and ultimately ensure that we can get superfast speeds to all. This will include areas not yet reached, as well as those who are part of the network already but currently too far from the current cabinets to have achieved superfast speeds.”

The current programme will deliver access to fibre broadband to around 95% of premises by the end of December 2017, when combined with existing commercial roll-out plans.