18 rural Scottish communities urged to seize full fibre broadband opportunity
Communities can apply for free Government vouchers
Openreach is urging people in 18 rural Scottish communities to get behind bids to bring ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to local homes and businesses.
The company is urging communities to avoid the risk of missing out on once-in-a-lifetime full fibre upgrades by applying for free UK Government broadband vouchers, which can be used to secure faster speeds and greater reliability.
Eligible property owners in Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway; Southwood, Loans, Turnberry, Maidens, Dipple and Ballantrae in South Ayrshire; Carrbridge in the Highlands; Avonbridge in Falkirk; Greengairs, Upperton and Longriggend in North Lanarkshire; and Chapelton, Crossford, Crawford, Abington, Wanlockhead and Leadhills in South Lanarkshire, are being urged to apply for their vouchers by pledging them towards their community scheme.
If enough people sign up by pledging and validating their vouchers, the villages will join more than 1.1m homes and businesses across Scotland who already have access to full fibre broadband.
Funding through the UK Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the deployment of new broadband signal boosting technology* – which can extend the reach of the full fibre network - means more rural communities are now within reach of the ultrafast technology.
Openreach has identified the villages as being within scope for full fibre and is urging local people to take the next step by applying for and pooling together free UK Government Gigabit Vouchers to help fund the builds.[1]
Residents can check if they qualify and pledge their voucher on Connect My Community. Using the vouchers – which don’t cost residents anything - enables Openreach to work with a local community to build a customised, co-funded network. The vouchers can be combined to extend the ultrafast, ultra-reliable network to premises in outlying rural areas which won’t be covered by private investment.
Robert Thorburn, Openreach’s Partnership Director, said: “This is a really exciting opportunity for the people in these villages to bring all the benefits of ultrafast, ultra-reliable full fibre broadband to their communities.
“Our Fibre Community Partnership programme has meant that we’re able to potentially bring lots more communities across Scotland into our full fibre build plans. But building out the network to these harder to reach locations is still challenging – which is why its only possible with everyone working together – you, your neighbours and Openreach.
“Everyone who pledges a voucher will be doing their bit to help make these areas among the best-connected places in the UK.
“We’re investing £15 billion to build full fibre broadband to 25 million homes – and more than six million of those will be in the toughest third of the UK – but we can’t upgrade the whole country alone. This latest support from government is a vital part of that process.”
Once the pledge target for the scheme is reached, residents need to ensure they then validate their vouchers with the UK Government so that Openreach can confirm that building work can get underway. As part of the funding conditions, residents are asked to commit to ordering a full fibre service from a provider of their choice for at least 12 months once the new network is available, and confirm that they are connected.
Full fibre technology provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity; meaning fewer faults; more predictable, consistent speeds and enough capacity to easily meet growing data demands. It's also future-proof, which means it will serve generations to come and won’t need to be upgraded for decades.
Fibre optics - strands of glass around one-tenth the thickness of a human hair - transmit data using light signals. Fibre is smaller, lighter and more durable than copper cabling and less vulnerable to damage.
[1] the decision to build, the premises covered and the timeline are subject to technical survey and the correct threshold of validated vouchers being reached
