Openreach Tops 1 Million FTTP Broadband Premises in Scotland

Openreach (BT) has announced that their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network now covers just over 1 million properties in Scotland, which is up from 949,000 in late August 2023 and 800,000 in mid-March 2023. The operator has also revealed the 20 locations with the best “ultrafast broadband coverage” on their network.

The vast majority of their full fibre build in Scotland – costing an average of £300 per premises passed (i.e. £300m for Scotland) – reflects commercial investment, although they’re also covering some areas with support from Gigabit Broadband Vouchers and the Scottish Government’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project. The latter aims to upgrade another 115,000 of Scotland’s hardest-to-reach premises by 2028 (they’ve already delivered 24,194 premises).

As part of this milestone, the operator is today also sharing their list of the top 20 Scottish hotspots with the most “ultrafast broadband” coverage on their network (in this case, ultrafast means FTTP-only). At the top of that table is Lundin Links, Fife, with more than 9 out of 10 properties able to upgrade to the new network. Tranent, on the other side of the Forth, is a fraction behind and the West Lothian village of Fauldhouse is third.

Ardrossan on the North Ayrshire coast, Aviemore in Highland and Findhorn in Moray all make the top 20 too. In Glasgow, the build has now passed 125,000 properties, while in Aberdeen engineers have reused the city’s old cable TV network (ducts) – built back in the 1980s and disused for the last 20 years – to help speed up their FTTP rollout.

Katie Milligan, Chair of the Openreach Scotland Board, said:

“Scots use roughly 100 million Gigabytes of data on our network each week – equivalent to every single person in the country watching a full HD movie every day – and data consumption is rising every single year.

That’s why our investment in the new fibre network is so important. Using tiny glass threads thinner than human hairs, it will meet data demands decades into the future.

This digital upgrade is a massive deal for Scotland. Transformative connectivity helps make communities sustainable – people can stay local and take full advantage of online opportunities.

It’s brilliant to reach one million homes and businesses, and a huge thank you must go to our engineers and build partners who’ve helped make it happen. But we’re not stopping there…”

Richard Lochhead, Scottish Government Innovation Minister, said:

“This is an important milestone in the drive to ensure more homes and businesses across Scotland benefit from full fibre broadband, improving vital connectivity.

We are working with Openreach to roll-out future-proofed digital infrastructure to our rural towns and villages and this Reaching 100% build, alongside Openreach’s commercial network, will underpin economic growth and enhance communities across Scotland for decades to come.”

The operator notes that they’re currently still building on the ground in places like Annan, Fraserburgh, Kirkcaldy and Greenock, as well as in Edinburgh, Glasgow and dozens of other cities, towns and villages. In terms of take-up, Openreach said that “just” 360,000 households and businesses out of a possible million have upgraded to their new FTTP network, but that’s still pretty good for such young infrastructure.

Sadly, the operator’s list of the top 20 locations in Scotland for ultrafast broadband coverage fails to include a useful statistic for how much coverage they’ve actually delivered for each location, which would have made for a useful comparison with independent data sources. But overall, Scotland is home to around 2.7 million dwellings, which means that Openreach alone now covers over a third of those.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting to hear how the UK government’s Project Gigabit funding for Scotland (aka – LOT 39) will be handled, although the first procurements should launch sometime soon. Some 410,00 premises across Scotland are currently predicted to need support from public funding to help them gain access to gigabit-capable (1000Mbps) broadband (here).

However, the Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) region has decided not to proceed with a local procurement for the Inverness and Highland City-Region Deal area. Premises in this area will now be incorporated into the Scotland-wide plans instead. In the meantime, voucher-enabled build is still taking place on the North East coast from Inverness.

Naturally, in order to benefit from the new network, you’ll need to order the service from a supporting ISP like BT, Sky Broadband, TalkTalk, Vodafone, Zen Internet, iDNET, AAISP and many more.

Openreach’s Top 20 ultrafast broadband hotspots in Scotland

Please note, this list includes publicly announced exchanges by Openreach. It also excludes very small exchanges, which have been predominantly upgraded using public funding.