The Scottish Government has launched a new evaluation survey that calls for feedback from those who have benefitted from their £600m Reaching 100% (R100) project with Openreach (BT). This is rolling out full fibre (FTTP) broadband to remote rural areas and has now built to a total of 70,000 premises or 75,000 if you include vouchers.
The R100 scheme aims to reach another 113,000 premises – split across three contracts – in areas that lack access to “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) by March 2028. LOT 1 (North Scotland and the Highlands) is expected to cover around 61,000 premises (100% via FTTP) by 2027/28, while LOT 2 (Central Scotland) was due to reach 32,000 (95.6% via FTTP) by 2023/24 and LOT 3 (Southern Scotland) targeted 22,000 (100% via FTTP) by 2024/25.
The good news today, judging from the latest data, is that the project appears to have effectively completed its LOT 3 (Southern Scotland) deployment target, although LOT 2 (Central Scotland) seems to be running a bit behind schedule.
You can see the latest data from the end of January 2025 below, although the figures do include some “overspill” (i.e. the extra premises that Openreach picks up while working within the same areas on the R100 build – explainer) and the impact from broadband vouchers under the R100 scheme.
R100 Rollout Progress (Jan 2025)
| Contract area | Total premises for delivery in the R100 contracts | R100 contract premises delivered | R100 SBVS premises delivered |
| Central | 30,287 | 25,292 | 1,243 |
| North | 60,764 | 21,509 | 3,065 |
| South | 21,889 | 22,750 | 601 |
| Total | 112,940 | 69,551 | 4,909 |
However, the Scottish Government is now calling on homes and businesses who have benefitted from this rollout to help provide some feedback, which they said will help them to understand how the new service is being used and what parts of daily life are being impacted by it.
“This feedback will play a vital role in informing future policy development and help us better understand the impact of the Scottish Government’s £600m investment in R100 and further public funds to come as Project Gigabit begins to roll-out in Scotland later this year,” said the Scottish Government.
This is a tricky ask because it assumes people will know that their service was delivered under R100, which isn’t always the case (i.e. it’s not always clear to the end-user whether the underlying network was built commercially or via state aid). The evaluation itself is being conducted by Stantec and responses need to be in by 3rd March 2025.
R100 evaluation survey:
https://bit.ly/R100_evaluation
Just for some wider context. At present around 80% of premises in Scotland can access a gigabit-capable (1Gbps download) broadband ISP network and this falls to 65.5% when only looking at FTTP technology (here). Ofcom predicts (here) that Scotland’s full fibre coverage will reach around 92-94% by May 2027, while gigabit-capable broadband (FTTP and Hybrid Fibre Coax / cable) should deliver 94% by that same date.
Sadly, the eventual completion of R100 will still leave a gap to fill, but resolving that will fall to the UK Government’s £5bn Project Gigabit broadband roll-out scheme. Some £450m (here) has already been allocated for this, and several procurements are currently underway (e.g. here, here, here), with Openreach being certain to win some of them (they’re expected to scoop the hardest Type C / Cross-Regional contracts).
The associated Building Digital UK agency has previously estimated that, post-R100, some 410,000 premises across Scotland may still need support from public funding to help them gain access to gigabit speeds (here).