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OVER 950 households and businesses in Moray can now get connected to the UK’s most reliable broadband 1 through the Scottish Government’s Reaching 100 per cent programme.
The £600 million R100 rollout has reached more than 57,000 of Scotland’s hardest to connect properties, with people in Alves, Elgin, Findhorn, Hopeman and Lossiemouth among those gaining access to full fibre internet connections.
Delivery partner Openreach is ramping up R100 work in Moray this summer, with properties in Dallas, Drummuir, Dunphail, Forres, Glass and Mulben next in line for an ultrafast upgrade.
Full fibre broadband is more than 30 times faster than the Scottish Government’s original commitment to make superfast services available to homes and businesses with existing connections of less than 30 Megabits per second (Mbps).
People can check if the rollout has reached their address yet and register for progress updates at www.openreach.co.uk/r100. Once full fibre is available, people need to arrange for their service to be upgraded through their chosen provider.
Scottish Government Employment and Investment Minister Tom Arthur said: “Digital infrastructure is a key enabler of economic growth and an increasingly vital part of our everyday lives.
“It’s why the Scottish Government is committed to ensuring communities across the length and breadth of the country will benefit from full fibre broadband and making record investment of over £600 million in its rollout.
“The R100 programme is a critical part of the upgrade to full fibre technology. As one of the most ambitious and complex digital infrastructure programmes in Europe, it is delivering future-proofed digital connectivity across the country and enabling more homes and businesses – including in our island and rural communities – to access a fast and reliable connection.
“It’s exciting that thousands more premises are now able to access a full fibre connection, and we’ll continue to work with Openreach to deliver further connections up and down the country.”
Robert Thorburn, Openreach partnership director for Scotland, added: “The R100 build is a monumental effort to upgrade and connect Scotland’s most challenging locations.
“There’s over a thousand people working on the build, with three million metres of new cable installed so far this year – enough to run up and down the A9 seven times.
“We’re seeing really positive, steady growth in take-up across the country, and our teams are all set for a busy summer of new upgrades, working closely with Moray Council.
“People are going to see a significant increase in our activity in many parts of Moray. We do our best to avoid disruptive operations by reusing existing poles and ducts and deploying engineering innovations instead of digging up roads.
“But we also want to make residents aware that sometimes civils work or new poles are needed, to include as many local homes and businesses in the upgrade as possible.”
Full fibre broadband provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connections, with fewer faults, consistent speeds and enough capacity to meet ever-growing data demands across multiple devices. It supports everything people do online at home, including streaming movies, TV and sport as well as online gaming, with a lot less buffering and slowdown at busier times.
For businesses, a full fibre connection can help with productivity, efficiency and security and support everyday operations like video calls, staff training, online banking and interactions with customers.
Research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) last year predicted that full fibre across Scotland could add £4.5 billion to the nation’s economy by 2030.