Fibre Boost for Carnoustie is ‘tee-rific’ thank to Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband

More than 720 additional homes and businesses in Carnoustie are now able to connect to high-speed fibre broadband thanks to the £428M Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.

As the town gets ready to host The Open this week and enjoys 'Carnoustival' , the Digital Scotland team celebrated fibre availability in Carnoustie as they visited a fibre street cabinet that serves part of the local area.

They were joined by Councillor Ron Sturrock, Suzi Caesar and Pauline Lockhart from Carnoustie Community Development Trust and Kirsty Macari (Angus Council’s economic development officer).

Premises in Carnoustie are among 890,000 homes and businesses across Scotland which are now able to access fibre broadband through the Digital Scotland rollout.

Other areas in Angus to benefit from the Digital Scotland rollout, led by the Scottish Government, include parts Tealing, Hillside, Brechin and Arbroath. More local coverage will follow as engineers from Openreach – Scotland’s digital network business – continue work on the ground.

Local people can check the Digital Scotland website - scotlandsuperfast.com - to find out if they are able to access the latest fibre broadband technology. People need to sign up with an internet service provider, as upgrades are not automatic.

Pauline Lockhart, from Carnoustie Community Development Trust, said: “It was a pleasure to join the Digital Scotland team to celebrate the availability of fibre broadband in Carnoustie this week. It's good to see this project reaching more communities and giving an increasing number of homes and businesses, like ours, the chance to connect to high-speed broadband.”

Councillor Ron Sturrock said: “Angus Council is pleased to see the continued roll-out of fibre connectivity across the area. We want everyone in our area to have ready access to digital services, as well as the skills and confidence to use them and the DSSB programme has supported connectivity across the vast majority of urban and rural Angus.”

Fibre broadband offers fast and reliable broadband connections at speeds of up to 80Mbps1 and there are many suppliers in the marketplace to choose from. Whether you own a business, work from home or want to keep in touch with friends and family, fibre broadband enables multiple users to connect to the internet at high speeds and get better, faster access to online services.

Sara Budge, Programme Director for Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband, said: “It’s fantastic news that the programme has been able to benefit residents and businesses in and around Carnoustie.

“I would like to thank Pauline and Suzi from Carnoustie Community Development Trust and Kirsty Macari for joining us to unveil the latest fibre street cabinet. I am really glad to see that it has been able to benefit the local community, especially for large sporting events like the open.”

Digital Scotland funding partners include the Scottish Government, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, BT Group, the UK Government through Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK), local authorities and the European Regional Development Fund. BT Group is investing £126 million in the rollout, and the total project value includes around £18 million which is being reinvested back in to the programme as a result of stronger than expected take-up.

Robert Thorburn, Openreach fibre partnership director for Scotland, said: “Thousands of people and businesses across Angus now have the opportunity to access their best-ever broadband speeds when they sign up with a service provider.

“Industry regulator Ofcom has highlighted that many consumers could be accessing significantly faster speeds by upgrading2, and I‘d urge local people to check if they’re able to order the high-speed services that are now widely available across Scotland.”

Further information is also available on Twitter @ScotSuperfast or Facebook at www.facebook.com/scotlandsuperfast

1 and 2 These are the top wholesale speeds available over the Openreach networks to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary.

2 FTTP is capable of delivering the fastest residential broadband speeds in the UK – up to 1Gbps. That’s around 24 times the UK average speed of 44Mbps (according to Ofcom) and enough to stream 200 HD Netflix movies simultaneously, based on Netflix internet connection speed requirements.