BT has announced that 1.5 million homes and businesses in Scotland have been reached by its fibre broadband.
Engineers from Openreach have laid 4,500 km of fibre cable, connecting with homes and business premises. The highest number of connected premises was in Glasgow, with 173,000, followed by Edinburgh with 152,000.
The project was carried out by the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband partnership which includes the Scottish Government, UK Government and the Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
The programme aims to bring fibre broadband to parts of the country not currently included in the investment plans of commercial providers.
It is expected that 85 percent of Scottish premises will have access by 2016 and 95 percent by 2018.
Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, commented: "BT has been a driving force in transforming Scotland’s broadband landscape, passing another 10,000 households with the technology every week last year.
"We’ve recruited hundreds of extra engineers and invested hundreds of millions of pounds through our own commercial fibre broadband programme and the Digital Scotland partnership.
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"Access to secure, high-speed communications will drive the future economic prosperity of our country. It’s vital that people embrace the digital revolution and make the most of the new infrastructure. Together with our partners, we will continue to work to meet Scotland’s ambition of delivering world class connectivity by 2020."
"This is tremendous news for Scotland, and I’m delighted that 1.5m homes and businesses have now got access to a fast and reliable internet connection," said UK Government Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey.
"The UK government is investing £100 million in superfast broadband for Scotland and our rollout has already reached more than 200,000 properties that the commercial rollout would not have covered."
