Chamber and committees

The Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme has been very successful, delivering truly transformative results across all 32 Scottish Local Authorities, with fibre broadband access extended to over 930,000 homes and businesses across Scotland – many of these in remote and rural locations – with over 26,800 premises in the constituency of Galloway and West Dumfries alone.

Of course, it has been a challenge to deliver broadband infrastructure improvements to some of the most remote and rural areas, especially given the fact that all regulatory and legal responsibility for telecommunications in the UK rests solely with the UK Government, under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998.

The Community Broadband Scotland (CBS) initiative helped to support a number of successful community-run networks across Scotland. However, an extensive review of how best to deliver continued support to such networks concluded that – despite its successes – the CBS model was no longer the most viable approach, not least because of constraints around state aid challenges. Communities within the project pipeline were given the option of continuing with their own projects or being included in planning for our £600 million Reaching 100 percent programme (R100), and the vast majority of communities indicated a preference to wait for the R100 rollout, give the commitment to deliver services at superfast speeds of 30 Megabits per second or better.

The lessons learned from this process have helped to shape the design of the R100 programme. Primary amongst those lessons was the need to continue engagement with communities and suppliers to ensure their voices are heard. The result has been an extensive and ongoing engagement process, with R100 officials visiting all parts of Scotland to speak with stakeholders, and with the objective of ensuring that no communities are left behind.