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[Bowdon]

Clawback to Boost Scotland’s Highlands Fibre Broadband Cover to 86%

Good news for those living in the rural Highlands and Islands region of Scotland. The £410m Digital Scotland programme with Openreach (BT) has announced that strong take-up of “fibre broadband” means an extra 6,000 premises will be covered via a reinvestment of £2.3m.

At present the project is working to roll-out the FTTC/P based broadband connectivity to 95% of Scotland by December 2017 (around 88% can already access “superfast broadband”), although the target for the Highland and Islands (HIE) region alone is currently just 84% by the end of 2016.

However the clawback (gain share) mechanism in related contracts requires BT to return part of the public investment when adoption of the new service passes beyond the 20% mark in related intervention areas, which can then be reinvested to further improve coverage and connection speeds.