Openreach, a company wholly owned by the British multinational telecommunications firm BT Group, has connected one million homes and businesses in Scotland to its ultrafast fiber network.
In line with this, the telecommunications company announced the 20 locations with the most ultrafast broadband coverage in the country. Lundin Links, Fife, topped the list with over nine out of 10 properties able to upgrade to ultrafast broadband. While cities are often assumed to have the best coverage, small towns dominate Openreach’s list of hotspots with the highest levels of fiber.
Openreach confirmed that in addition to Edinburgh, Glasgow and dozens of other cities, towns and villages, work was still being done on the ground in places like Annan, Fraserburgh, Kirkcaldy and Greenock.
So far, Openreach has invested more than £300 million (over $360 million) in Scotland’s new network. Only 360,000 households and businesses out of a possible million have upgraded to the faster, more reliable services.
“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,” according to Katie Milligan, chair of the Openreach Scotland Board.
“That’s why our investment in the new fiber 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.”
Openreach also revealed that it was collaborating with the Scottish and UK governments on the Reaching 100% (R100) program and voucher schemes to bring fiber networks to Scotland’s most remote and difficult-to-reach areas.
It was noted that infrastructure upgrades were currently underway from the shores of Loch Leven to island communities such as Lismore and Jura, with R100 construction set to begin soon in places such as Pitcaple in Aberdeenshire, Hillside in Angus, Ballachulish and Cromarty in Highland and Birsay in Orkney.
