Around 65,000 Scottish homes and businesses, including many in some of the most isolated areas of the UK, will receive access to fast, reliable broadband as part of the government’s Plan for Change.
Digitally isolated communities across Scotland will be able to work, bank, shop, and study online without buffering, thanks to gigabit-capable broadband funded by the UK government.
Several remote islands off Scotland’s west coast, including thousands of premises across the Outer Hebrides, Skye, Islay, and Tiree, will benefit. Rural parts of the Highlands, such as Applecross and Durness, will also be covered. The £157 million contract with Openreach is the largest ever under Project Gigabit, aiming to tackle digital exclusion across the UK.
The deal, part of an £800 million agreement with Openreach announced last August, will connect over 227,000 premises in hard-to-reach parts of Wales and England. The contract supports significant work already underway through the Scottish Government’s R100 programme and builds on another Project Gigabit contract for up to 11,000 premises in the Borders and Midlothian. More contracts are expected later this year for Orkney, Shetland, and the east of Scotland.
Yvonne Boles, Senior Site Manager of Tayside Reserves at RSPB Scotland, commented:
“We fell between a few gaps in local network improvements, but now we have gigabit capable fibre to the RSPB Loch Leven visitor centre, which has been a game changer for us.
“The old internet was constantly going down or being very slow, which impacted our ability to work in the office as well as taking card payments in both the shop and the café.
“We wasted so much time on the phone to IT trying to fix things for us. It’s been such a relief and a benefit to have reliable, powerful internet.”
Project Gigabit targets places too difficult or expensive for providers to reach in their commercial build, ensuring these areas are not left behind with outdated digital infrastructure. The world-class networks being built across the UK will kickstart economic growth, create thousands of high-skilled jobs, and empower industries to innovate and increase productivity through digital technology.
This initiative is crucial to the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity, ensuring people can access vital services now and in the future, from government services like Universal Credit and HMRC to online courses and high-quality video calls.
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