Central Scotland to benefit from UK government’s gigabit programme

The government has announced that £4.5 million of the UK government’s nationwide gigabit programme will be spent on more than 5,300 homes and businesses in Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Falkirk, Fife, Stirlingshire, Greater Glasgow and Lothian. The premises were due to benefit from superfast broadband through the Scottish Government’s Reach 100 (R100) programme. However, on the basis that the UK Gigabit Programme would have to revisit the premises at some point in the future to convert them to FTTP, it made more sense to go directly to gigabit capability thereby reducing costs.

The Scottish Government is investing £579 million in funding towards the £600 million cost of its R100 programme, which aims to provide superfast to 100% of promises across Scotland. The majority of connections being delivered to more than 120,000 premises through the investment in the three R100 area contracts – 100% in South, 86% in North and 95% in Central – will be through FTTP, delivering gigabit capability.

The UK government is expected to announce further areas of the UK that will receive a share of the £5 billion (of which £1.2 billion has been released).