Local family benefits thanks to Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband
More than 830 homes and businesses across Errol are now able to connect to high-speed fibre broadband, thanks to the £428m Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.
The programme announced earlier this week that more than 95 per cent of homes and businesses across Scotland can now access fibre broadband. Combined with commercial coverage, the DSSB programme exceeded its target of 95 per cent on schedule.
Mary Smith and her family live in Grange, close to Errol, and they are among thousands of people across Perth and Kinross that are benefiting from fibre broadband.
Since signing up, Mary and her family have seen a significant improvement, resulting in a better work life balance. Mary says: "Prior to being connected to high-speed fibre broadband, the fastest internet download speed that we were able to receive was around 4Mbps and at times the connection dropped completely. This impacted on my ability to work from home and limited the streaming services that our family could use.
“However, since signing up to fibre broadband we have had a reliable service and we are maintaining download speeds in excess of 50Mbps. This means I can now confidently work from home without worrying if the broadband router will disconnect and my family can use streaming services.”
Across Perth and Kinross, more than 37,700 households and businesses can now order high-speed services thanks to the project, which has reached places like Little Dunkeld, Comrie and Muthill.
More local coverage will follow as engineers from Openreach, Scotland’s digital network business, continue work on the ground during 2018.
As 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 - it’s clear that families across Scotland can see an improvement in connections as it allows for a smoother and faster service.
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.
Mary added: "We felt the service we received previously was not reliable and the broadband router would often drop the connection, which was even more of an issue on the weekends. On Saturday mornings the children would use the internet to stream media or play games and I cannot remember a single Saturday morning when our service didn't drop the connection.
“Since we've upgraded they’ve been able to connect and use their wi-fi enabled devices without any problems and the new router hasn't dropped the connection once!”
Councillor Angus Forbes, Convener of the Council’s Environment and Infrastructure Committee said: “It’s terrific news that hundreds of residents and business in Errol will now gain the benefits of having access to high-speed fibre broadband.”
Sara Budge, Programme Director for Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband, says: “It’s fantastic news that the programme has been able to benefit Mary and her family and many others residents and businesses in and around Errol.”
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 during 2018 as a result of stronger than expected take-up.
Robert Thorburn, Openreach fibre partnership director for Scotland, said: “Thousands of people and businesses across Perth and Kinross 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
1These are the top wholesale speeds available over Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) technology from Openreach to all service providers; speeds offered by service providers may vary.
2For further information see the Ofcom Connected Nations report 2017.
ENDS
