The Scottish Government (SG) has confirmed to ISPreview that they will be introducing a “temporary pause” on Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) applications for gigabit-capable projects covering multiple premises, which is intended to ensure the “best use of public funds” and to help “deliver an optimised roll out schedule“.
The SBVS is designed to complement the SG’s £600m Reaching 100% (R100) broadband upgrade project with Openreach (BT), which is because R100 alone won’t be enough to upgrade every single property. As a result, the SBVS was setup to offer homes in disadvantaged areas the ability to take a subsidy of up to £5,000 to help cover the installation costs of a 30Mbps+ capable network, which can be combined with vouchers from other premises to help build a new local network (nearly 6,000 premises in Scotland have benefitted from the vouchers).
However, some suppliers for the voucher scheme in Scotland recently informed ISPreview that the SG is planning to put a “pause” on new applications for broadband vouchers from Monday 19th August 2024, which specifically impacts PRPs / Pre Registered Packages (i.e. this is where a supplier / network operator bundles vouchers together, such as when aiming to upgrade a whole village in one project).
The main reason for this is because the SG wants to avoid clashing (i.e. duplicating public investment) with the UK Government’s Project Gigabit programme, which has separately allocated £450m (here) to help spread 1Gbps broadband speeds into some of the most remote rural areas of Scotland.
The associated Building Digital UK (BDUK) agency has previously estimated that some 410,000 premises across Scotland may need support from public funding to help them gain access to gigabit broadband speeds in the future (here).
Crucially, the first large build procurements under the new Project Gigabit scheme have already launched (example) and so, much like the recent situation in Wales (here), it has become necessary to pause a major part of SBVS until the exact coverage plan for contracts under the new project have been determined. The UK’s central Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme (GBVS) is already suspended across much of the country, including in Scotland, for the same reason.
An SG Spokesperson told ISPreview:
“The R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) is a key component of our strategy to maximise broadband coverage in Scotland. We can confirm that there are no changes to the Scheme for individual properties, with applications for both superfast and gigabit-capable solutions open as usual. Property owners and residents can keep up-to-date on voucher eligibility for their property via our address checker.
Following the launch of the first Project Gigabit procurements in Scotland in May 2024, there will be a temporary pause on SBVS applications for gigabit-capable projects covering multiple premises. A similar pause is being made by the UK Government to ensure best use of public funds and deliver an optimised roll out schedule.
Applications for superfast [30Mbps+] projects covering multiple premises remain unaffected.”
The fact that the scheme is still open to individual applications may be a moot point, since suppliers often have to use PRPs to make the economics of a remote rural broadband build work and support efficient network delivery. By comparison, individual vouchers may be more viable for infill and extensions of an existing network, rather than new community-wide deployments.
The difficult reality here for suppliers to the voucher scheme with pending voucher schemes and the communities involved is that they will face some costly disruption, which may be enough to place some of their proposed broadband deployment projects into a state of limbo (we’ve already seen this happen before in England). But any already approved voucher projects should be able to carry on as normal (the same goes for those already submitted in a final format and undergoing approvals).
Project Gigabit ultimately aims to help extend 1000Mbps (download) capable broadband networks to reach at least 85% of UK premises by the end of 2025 (currently 83.4%) and then “nationwide” coverage (c. 99%) by 2030 (here). But those figures are an average, and actual coverage may vary around the country.