Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Scottish Government (SG) has announced that, following a “review of market conditions“, they will close their own Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) to new applications on 20th November 2026. The move comes shortly after the UK Government closed their own voucher scheme (GBVS) to new projects last month.
Just to recap. The SBVS previously offered vouchers worth up to £5,000 per property to help homes and businesses in poorly served areas pay for the installation of a faster broadband connection. In order to be eligible for this, homes needed to be in an area that could currently only deliver speeds of less than 30Mbps and where there were no plans for future upgrades (either through government programmes or commercial builds).
However, broadband coverage has improved significantly since the original scheme launched, while vouchers have also increasingly found themselves coming into some conflict with other subsidised deployments. For example, the Scottish Government is currently expanding the coverage of full fibre (FTTP) networks into remote areas via Openreach (BT) under the £697m Reaching 100% (R100) project – aiming to cover a total of 112,939 premises in poorly served areas by March 2028 (100,217 premises have already been done).