On 15^th December 2017, Ofcom published its Connected Nations 2017 report.

The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme welcomes the findings, which again show that Scotland has made the largest year-on-year stride in superfast coverage within the UK.

We are happy that the report specifically calls out that the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme has ‘played an important role in delivering improvements to rural areas’, and further in the same report ‘these communities can expect to see improvements via the broadband rollout programme provided by the Scottish Government and UK Government.'

The report highlights that:

• Superfast coverage for SMEs in Scotland has also increased from 72% in 2016 to 78% in 2017.
• As of 30 June 2017, superfast broadband coverage (using the European Commission’s definition of 30Mbps) in Scotland has increased from 83% in 2016 to 87% of premises in 2017. This represents an increase of 4 percentage points over the previous 12 months, and a rise since 2014 of around 26 percentage points, compared with around 16 percentage points for the UK as a whole
• 99% of premises in Scotland are now able to access a basic broadband service of 2Mbps or above, 97% are able to access 5Mbps or above, and 89% are able to access 24Mbps or above.

OFCOM commented that ‘a significant number of consumers could be accessing significantly faster speeds by upgrading, with only 39% of connections in Scotland actually delivering superfast speeds’. The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme recognises this challenge and will continue our demand stimulation activity throughout 2018.

It is important to remember that the report classes ‘superfast’ as being above 30Mbps, whereas the programme classes superfast as being above 24Mbps. The figures used in it date back to June 2017.

The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme is on time and on budget to help deliver access to fibre to 95% of homes and business (when combined with commercial coverage).

Overall, the programme is delighted to see the continued progress on broadband deployment in Scotland reflected in the OFCOM Connected Nations report.

You can find a the full report here.