Scottish digital infrastructure reaches highlands | UKAuthority

Over a million high speed digital connections have been achieved in Scotland as a result of two major public sector funding programmes.

The Scottish Government has invested £1 billion into digital infrastructure since 2014, it claims, and under the most recent initiative, the Reaching 100% (R100) programme, Scotland has invested £600 million into one of Europe’s largest digital infrastructure programmes. This includes connecting up remote Highland communities. R100 has used three activities to reach its milestone: a Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme, government contracts and commercial coverage. 

The Scottish Government contracts are the largest investment, and it expects these to deliver 114,000 connections across Scotland. At present, 48,000 connections have been delivered and 3,800 through the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme.

Gigabit capability

Initially, R100 aimed to deliver superfast broadband, but it is now providing gigabit capable connections to 99% of cases, according to the Scottish Government.

Wellbeing Economy Secretary Mairi McAllan said: “Enabling more than one million connections to faster broadband is a landmark achievement. Fast and reliable broadband has never been so important: it is an increasingly vital tool for everything from work and leisure, healthcare and education.”

In 2014 the Scottish Government announced the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme with £463 million in funding. The programme aimed to connect 950,600 premises with fibre-based broadband. For the R100 programme, the Scottish Government invested £590 million in funding, whilst the UK government and telecoms provider BT invested £52 million and £53 million, respectively.