S6W-27277

Asked by: Regan, Ash (Alba Party - Edinburgh Eastern)

Question

To ask the Scottish Government what assessment it has made of the work to upgrade existing fibre broadband connections to fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connections across Scotland; what the projected timeline is for this upgrade work; what steps are being taken to ensure that people can benefit from this work, in light of reports of some landlords not allowing permission for their property to be connected to FTTP networks, and how it can ensure that the pricing of FTTP broadband remains affordable, in light of the roll-out receiving public funding.

Answered by Forbes, Kate

The latest update to Ofcom’s Connected Nations report shows that full fibre coverage across Scotland now currently stands at 58%, which represents an increase of 5 percentage points – around 138,000 premises – over the previous three months. This means that over 1.57 million homes and businesses in Scotland can now access a full fibre broadband service.

While most of this full fibre deployment has been delivered commercially, the over-£600 million that the Scottish Government is investing in the Reaching 100% (R100) programme is ensuring that homes and businesses in some of Scotland’s harder-to-reach communities are also benefitting from future-proofed full fibre digital connectivity.

Where it is not possible for an operator to reach agreement with landlords, they can seek to have one imposed by the courts. The UK Government has recently reformed the Electronic Communications Code to make this process easier and we are working with operators to understand any issues, so that we can press the UK Government if further reform is needed.

While the Scottish Government is funding build through the R100 contracts, it is doing so through a gap funding model, whereby it is subsidising our delivery partner, Openreach, to extend its own commercial network across Scotland. As you will know, all regulation and legislative competence in the area of telecommunications is wholly reserved to UK Ministers and the UK Parliament under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998. As such, the Scottish Government has no mechanism for intervening on any commercial decisions a telecoms operator chooses to make, such as how much they charge for installation, services etc. Responsibility for commercial matters of this nature ultimately rests solely with Ofcom in its capacity as the UK’s telecoms regulator.