More households and businesses across Aberdeenshire can now upgrade to faster fibre broadband through the £463 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) rollout.

The rollout has reached the small village of King Edward for the first time, while more coverage has gone live in St Cyrus, Fyvie, Muir of Fowlis, Port Soy and Turriff.

Some of the latest premises to be covered – in Auchenblae and Kingswells – are connected to a full fibre network. Also known as Fibre-to-the-Premises or FTTP, the gigabit-capable technology provides ultrafast¹ broadband directly into local homes.

Across Scotland around 944,000 premises have now been passed by the programme. More than 5,000 new fibre street cabinets are now live – offering broadband services at speeds up to 80Mbps¹ – and more than 15,000km of cable has been laid.

Engineers from Openreach will continue work on the ground in Aberdeenshire during 2020, thanks to additional investment as a result of innovation and new funding generated by stronger than expected take-up.

Across Scotland, more than 60 per cent of properties reached by the programme have now switched to faster fibre broadband.

Fibre technology offers fast and reliable connections at a range of speeds¹ and there are many suppliers in the marketplace to choose from. Local people can check if the new fibre services are available to them at www.scotlandsuperfast.com/yourstreet.

Sara Budge, DSSB Programme Director, said: "More and more people have now signed up or are able to sign up to fibre broadband thanks to the £463 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme, and it is particularly pleasing to see this in rural areas and rural market towns such as Turriff and Auchenblae.

"The difference that having fibre broadband can make to businesses or to improving the range of services available in the home is amazing. I’d urge everyone to take advantage of the faster speeds now available.

“There's lots of competition out there and people may find they could be surfing at much higher speeds at a similar cost to their current service, but the key is for customers to contact one or more service providers to explore the options available to them, as upgrades to customers’ broadband packages are not automatic.”

Delivered through two projects - led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise in its area and the Scottish Government in the rest of Scotland - funding partners also include the UK Government through Building Digital UK (BDUK), BT Group, local authorities and the EU via the European Regional Development Fund, with Openreach leading the build on the ground.

Councillor Peter Argyle, Aberdeenshire Council’s Infrastructure Services Committee chair, said: “It is great news that the DSSB programme has reached more places in Aberdeenshire including Portsoy and Muir of Fowlis. Faster broadband is bound to be of benefit for residents and businesses alike who use the internet during day-to-day work or for pleasure after the working day is finished.”

Robert Thorburn, Partnership Director for Openreach in Scotland, said: “It’s great that the Digital Scotland project is still breaking new ground and reaching new places. Thanks to our partnership, more than 86,800 homes and business premises in Aberdeenshire can now connect to a fibre service.

“Our engineers remain as focused on bringing better broadband to as much of Aberdeenshire as possible as they were on day one. In these final months of the project we’re building ultrafast full fibre to some of the hardest-to-reach clusters of homes.

“The Digital Scotland rollout is a huge civil engineering success which has reached 100,000 more premises than planned and beat targets on time and under budget. It’s fantastic that 60 per cent of the homes and businesses we’ve passed have now upgraded, and I’d encourage anyone who hasn’t yet made the move to check if they could get a faster service.”