70,000 extra homes and businesses across Tayside and Fife will soon enjoy ultra-fast broadband as part of an upgrade by Openreach.
More than 160 exchange areas across Scotland will be upgraded, including five in Angus and 15 in Fife.
The upgrade in Fife will benefit around 25,000 homes and businesses. This will include areas like Crail, St Monans, Leuchars, St Andrews, Burntisland, Cardenden and Aberdour.
11 exchanges in Perth and Kinross will be upgraded, benefiting homes in places like Pitlochry, Aberfeldy, Coupar Angus and Auchterarder.
Arbroath, Kirriemuir and Montrose will all benefit from upgrades in the Angus area.
The upgrades by Openreach in Tayside and Fife are part of a nationwide five-year ‘feat of civil engineering’, Openreach said.
Full Fibre is up to 10 times faster than the average home broadband connection. The upgrade will allow Scots to enjoy faster game downloads, better quality video calls and higher resolution movie streaming.
‘This is good news for Scotland’
Openreach said households would also be able to use multiple devices at once without experiencing a slowdown.
Full fibre is also less affected by peak time congestion, they said.
Economy Secretary Kate Forbes said: “This is good news for Scotland. The rollout of ultrafast broadband to so many more rural communities is vitally important, especially as we focus on recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Continued commercial build is an important part of the Reaching 100% Programme’s aim to provide access to superfast speeds for all premises.
“This focus on rural and hard-to-reach areas is exactly what I want to see and I look forward to hearing that these 300,000 addresses are connected.”
Robert Thorburn, Openreach Scotland’s strategic infrastructure director, said the project was a massive challenge.
He added:: “Some parts of the country will inevitably require further public funding.
“But our expanded build plan means any future taxpayer subsidies can be limited to only the hardest to connect homes and businesses. And with investments from other builders, we’d hope to see that shrink further.”
Mr Thorburn added that Full Fibre broadband would be a “massive boost” to Scotland and the UK.
He also pointed to the number of Scottish jobs created by Openreach, including apprenticeships.
“We’ll publish further location details and timescales on our website as detailed surveys and planning are completed and the build progresses.”