Digital broadband opportunities in Angus
Scotland’s digital strategy
Embracing digital technology offers many benefits for your business, including the ability to engage with customers directly, to develop new processes and products, and to sell these products to a global market, 24 hours a day at relatively low cost.
Scotland’s digital strategy, “Realising Scotland’s full potential in a digital world”, sets out how we will ensure digital is at the heart of everything we do – how we deliver economic growth, reform public services, and prepare children for the workplace of the future.
This digital strategy will ensure we have a secure place to work, learn and do business. It will help attract, recruit and retain diverse talent in our digital workforce and help businesses to realise the value of their existing data. It will offer digital support to help your business become internationally competitive.
Another key action from the strategy is to improve and extend broadband and mobile networks across the region. This includes delivering a future-proofed, national fibre network and building a wireless network in rural Angus to allow residents and businesses to obtain Superfast Broadband.
Smart Angus
Smart Angus sets out how we will implement Scotland’s digital strategy in Angus across healthcare, infrastructure, education, energy, mobility and all other areas that could benefit.
Smart Angus will have many different benefits across the region, including:
- Developing digital connectivity
- E-health and quality of life
- Unlocking development space
- Protecting rural jobs and business start-ups
- Visitors and tourism
- Journey time savings, home working, remote training and remote learning
- Online shopping
- Digital council services
- New opportunities like the Smart Port in Montrose, as well as Agritech, drone technology, Internet Of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, Virtual Reality (VR)
Digital broadband solutions for Angus
Reaching 100% (R100)
The Scottish Government’s Digital Strategy includes a ‘Reaching 100%’ (R100) commitment. It aims for every home and business in Scotland to have access to superfast broadband of 30 Megabits per second (Mbps).
The ‘Northern Lot’ of the R100 programme covers Angus and is scheduled to run until the end of 2023. All businesses that are not scheduled to get an R100 connection (or may not be included) by the end of 2021 are eligible to apply for the Scottish Broadband Voucher Scheme.
Local Full Fibre Network
Local Full Fibre Network (LFFN) aims to help spread Gigabit (1000Mbps+) class connections to key public buildings and businesses, with the expectation that this leads to broadband providers creating additional connections to local homes and businesses.
Through funding available from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport and the Tay Cities Deal, we are installing fibre connectivity to 50 Angus Council buildings. As a result of this commitment, Openreach will be upgrading the infrastructure within the vicinity of these buildings for residents and businesses to obtain full fibre connectivity.
Rural Broadband
At present there are many premises in Angus that do not receive Superfast Broadband, most of them being in a rural location. The Rural Broadband project aims to build an ‘Open Access’ wireless network within rural Angus to provide Superfast Broadband connectivity.
This project has received funding from the Tay Cities Deal. The initial phase of this project is concentrated on the area between Arbroath, Brechin and Montrose.
Check your current internet connectivity
To check the status of your current internet connectivity:
- Step 1: Visit the Scotland Superfast website
- Step 2: Enter your postcode and select your premise
- Step 3: You will be able to see the type of broadband available to your premise
