Amid months of discussion about the coverage and quality of Scotland’s telecoms infrastructure, BT is rolling out of superfast Fibre-To-The-Premises (FTTP) broadband to new housing developments in Scotland.

According to BT, 29 planned housing developments up and down the country at locations including Aberdeen, Perth, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dunfermline, Paisley and East Kilbride will have ultrafast speeds of up to 1Gbps built in.

In total, approximately 11,850 new homes will benefit from the infrastructure. The scheme is the result of a deal struck between Openreach and developers, forming part of a UK-wide initiative supported by the Home Builders Federation and Homes for Scotland to connect all new housing developments of 30 properties or more with ultrafast fibre infrastructure.

Nicola Barclay, Chief Executive of Homes for Scotland, stressed the importance of fibre as a core utility for modern homes. Barclay said: “High speed broadband is an absolute ‘must have’ for today’s new home buyers who continue to demand faster and better broadband connections as consumers are doing more and more online and at the same time, from streaming high definition movies and TV, gaming, online shopping to using mobile devices over wireless broadband.

“Openreach’s provision of free fibre-to-the-premises for developments with over 30 homes is therefore very welcome.”

Andrew Hepburn, Openreach Fibre Rollout Director for Scotland, added: “An ultrafast broadband network will be a major boost for these new communities by ensuring that people living and working there have quick access to some of the fastest speeds available. The 11,850 homes are in addition to the 9,000 homes Openreach announced in July at a dozen more new sites all over Scotland.

“It reflects our commitment to ensuring that Scotland has a first-class network, capable of delivering the latest communication services for households, businesses and other organisations. We know that people are passionate about the speed and reliability of the broadband service their communication provider can offer them and that, for some, the availability of ultrafast speeds will strongly influence their decision on which new property to buy.”

The full details of the developments which will benefit from new ultrafast networks are as follows:

The news follows the announcement of Aberdeen as one of the UK’s FTTP trial centres. The city will be at the forefront to try out the new tech from the £200 million initiative, benefiting businesses, schools and hospitals first.