From Yell to Yetholm, the Scottish Government’s Reaching 100% (R100) programme is delivering access to faster broadband where it’s needed most, in rural Scotland.

Homes and businesses nationwide can access a superfast broadband service through a combination of the R100 contracts, the R100 Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme (SBVS) and continued commercial coverage as evidenced by Ofcom who recently reported that commercially accessible Low Earth Orbit satellite broadband is now available nationwide.

R100 delivery partner, Openreach, continues to deliver additional non-contract connections as a result of R100 contract build – these are homes and businesses that weren’t expected to be connected through the R100 contract build, but received access from Openreach when they were building nearby.

By January 2024, over 10,200 premises have benefited from this additional build - find out more about additional build.

When entering a postcode into our online address checker, premises in R100 contract build plans are advised when they can expect access to their new broadband connection. Openreach build to this schedule, but from time-to-time it takes longer than expected and deployment plans can be updated to enable Openreach and their sub-contractors to work more efficiently and combine R100 contract build with their own commercial activity.

One recent example of this is the R100 Central contract area. With commercial build going further than originally anticipated – over 3,000 premises due to be connected through the R100 Central contract have already received access to faster broadband via a commercial provider – re-investment of £2.8m of Scottish Government funding and additional funding of £2.7m from the UK Government will allow more than 1,000 hard to reach premises to be added to the existing R100 Central contract.

To accommodate these additional homes and businesses and to take account of properties that have been delivered commercially, the Central deployment plan has been re-modelled with latest individual build plans available at the R100 online address checker.

The R100 contracts are extending gigabit-capable broadband access to some of the hardest to reach communities in Scotland. Taking new digital infrastructure to these premises is much more costly and complex and as a result takes more time, however the Scottish Government is making this investment to provide future-proofed connectivity for decades to come.