New homes across the north are set to benefit from access to reliable ultrafast broadband.
Openreach is working with local developers to build full fibre networks direct to dozens of new homes in Gott on Shetland, Kirkwall on Orkney, Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and Bowmore on Islay, as well as Lochgilphead and Oban in Argyll.
Engineers have installed almost four miles of new core fibre cabling to reach the sites – enough to stretch across the Skye Bridge a dozen times.
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The first premises to benefit are at Orkney Builders’ Grainbank development in Kirkwall on Orkney, where all 32 houses are now able to connect to ultrafast broadband, and 30 new houses and 16 flats at Gaet-a-Gott by Tingwall on Shetland, where the full-fibre network started to go live at the end of September.
The Shetland project alone involved the installation of 0.8 of a mile of cable along the main A970 between Lerwick and Sullom Voe to the site’s entrance. The new infrastructure will provide the same connectivity to the rest of the site which, when complete, will comprise around 80 new homes.
Twenty new houses in the new Sealladh development at Bowmore on Islay and four houses and 12 flats on the site of a former high school in Lochgilphead started to be connected to full-fibre in October, and full-fibre for 50 new premises at Sandwick by Stornoway will follow soon, with 0.8 of a mile of core fibre spine already in place to serve the site.
Meanwhile, the first FTTP at a building site in the Oban exchange area has gone live on the Glenshellach development, where 26 houses and 24 flats will be able to connect.
Andrew Hepburn, Openreach’s fibre delivery director for Scotland, said: “We’ve been honing our skills on full-fibre rollout in places like Altnaharra in Sutherland. New, more efficient techniques and equipment we tried out there are now helping us to deliver full-fibre networks to other rural places.“