BROADBAND is set to receive extra investment of almost £18 million thanks to the continued success of the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme.

Some 6000 homes and businesses will benefit due to stronger than expected take-up of fibre broadband by the public. Now, a total of £17.8m is being reinvested back into the programme.

The boost across Scotland will see some premises connect to high-speed broadband for the first time and boost connection speeds in other areas.

Cabinet Secretary for Transport, Infrastructure and Connectivity Michael Matheson announced the new funding during a visit to see Openreach engineers installing the latest full fibre technology.

Matheson said: “I am delighted that thanks to higher than expected uptake of services on infrastructure funded by the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme, even more premises will now receive fast, reliable broadband.

“The programme has not only delivered on time and on budget, but has exceeded its original aim of connecting 95% of Scotland to fibre broadband. More and more communities will now have the opportunity to benefit from investment in reliable and speedy broadband services.”

Openreach decided to accelerate the return of additional funding under the contract after take-up rates in the Digital Scotland intervention area topped 50%.

The programme will now continue deployment until 2020, with engineers connecting most of the homes and businesses to a full fibre network. This technology is capable of carrying speeds of up to 1Gbps2 – fast enough to download a two-hour HD movie in 25 seconds or a 45-minute HD TV programme in just five seconds.

Robert Thorburn, Openreach partnership manager for Scotland, said: “This extra funding, which we’re returning early, will help us deploy to another 6000 of Scotland’s hardest-to-reach households.

“Full fibre broadband provides more reliable, resilient and future-proof connectivity. We’ll use it to reduce not-spots and improve some existing speeds.

“We’re very proud of our strong track record of delivering fast broadband to rural Scotland and look forward to connecting even more communities.”

In March 2017 over £15.6m was invested back into the programme thanks to a similar contract handback. To date, the partnership has provided fibre broadband access to 931,000 premises.

Openreach Limited, which employs 33,000 people, is the UK’s digital network business.

The firm works across the UK to connect homes, schools, shops, banks, hospitals and more to the rest of the world.

The company says its mission “is to build the best possible network, with the highest quality service, making sure that everyone in the UK can be connected”.

Over the last 10 years, Openrech has invested more than £13 billion into its network, which is now more than 173m km long – enough to wrap around the world 4314 times.

Openreach says it is “on track” to reach four million premises with full fibre technology by March 2021. Recently the firm announced it would be hiring around 3000 trainee engineers over 2019 to help build its network and improve its service across the country.

For the year ending March 31 2019, Openreach reported revenues of £5.1bn.