Broadband boost for Fife and Tayside

Thousands of homes and businesses in Tayside and Fife are set for a broadband boost as part of a £95 million investment.

Openreach will be bringing full fibre broadband to communities across the area.

Dundee’s Claverhouse and Baxter areas and Broughty Ferry will receive an upgrade alongside Forfar in Angus.

Also included are Inverkeithing, Buckhaven, Kennoway, Auchtermuchty,

Falkland and Upper Largo in Fife and Comrie in Perthshire, with local investment totalling £21.6m.

The digital network provider has already reached around 480,000 homes and businesses in Scotland with full fibre broadband, which is up to ten times faster than the average home broadband connection.

The upgrade will allow Scots to enjoy faster game downloads, better quality video calls and higher resolution movie streaming.

The plans follow news earlier this year that around 70,000 Tayside and Fife homes and businesses would get access to Openreach’s network.

These towns include Arbroath, Montrose, St Andrews, Crail, Pitlochry and Blairgowrie.

Openreach in Scotland partnership director Robert Thorburn said: “Good connectivity is vital, whether it’s to work from home, access education

and care services, or for gaming and streaming entertainment.

“Our engineers and build partners are reaching more communities every week and we’re not just building in urban areas.

“Many rural communities are already benefiting and we plan to reach many more in the coming months and years.”

The company plans to reach a total of 25 million premises by the end of December 2026.

This includes more than six million in the hardestto-serve parts of the country defined by industry regulator Ofcom.

As well as a broadband boost, mobile infrastructure in the region will also get an upgrade.

The Tay Cities local authorities – Angus, Dundee, Fife and Perth and Kinross – are working with Infralink to encourage investment in mobile infrastructure.

Infralink is a programme established by the Scottish Futures Trust to promote the rollout of digital connectivity across the region.

UPGRADE: Full fibre broadband is up to ten times faster than the average connection.