Superfast, ultrafast and gigabit capable broadband infrastructure - Open Market Review: request for information - January 2025

1. Introduction and Background

The Scottish Government wants Scotland to be a fully digitally inclusive nation in which our digital and data infrastructure is recognised as critical national infrastructure and the benefits of technology are available to everyone.

Scotland’s Infrastructure Investment Plan adopts a wide, encompassing definition of infrastructure. It extends beyond the fibre, masts and small cells needed to meet our connectivity needs, to encompass digital platforms, online public services and data architecture. Future capital investment decisions will be driven by this understanding of the role that data and digital play in ensuring the economic and societal resilience of all our communities and our ability to trade with the world. They will also support our transition to a net zero society by enabling us to replace unnecessary journeys and make more efficient, environmentally friendly use of the more traditional infrastructure of transport and buildings.

Over £1 billion of funding has already been invested to transform Scotland’s digital connectivity via our Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) and Scottish 4G Infill (S4Gi) programmes and our ongoing Reaching 100% (R100) Programme.

In March 2021, the UK government announced an ambition to deliver nationwide gigabit-capable broadband as soon as possible, recognising that there is a need for government intervention in the parts of the country that are not commercially viable. They have committed £5 billion for the hardest to reach parts of the UK, ensuring that all areas can benefit. This will be spent through a package of coordinated and mutually supportive interventions, collectively known as Project Gigabit. This investment builds on the gigabit-capable infrastructure currently being delivered through the Scottish Government’s R100 programme.

As part of Project Gigabit, the Scottish Government in collaboration with the UK Government has developed a procurement approach for funding contracts with suppliers, delivering gigabit-capable wholesale infrastructure in Scotland. This procurement approach is a successor to the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme and works in parallel with the current R100 programme.

We wish to work collaboratively with industry to maximise efficiency, minimise market distortion and achieve our outcomes within a tight time frame. To do this, we must first identify potential Intervention Areas (IAs) which are not currently commercially viable, where no infrastructure exists or is planned to be built within the next three years (however, we are also interested in plans beyond this period, if available).

The Scottish Government has been collecting data from suppliers since 2012, with regular rolling updates since 2016. As of this Open Market Review (OMR), we are formally asking suppliers delivering broadband infrastructure to submit data returns on a 4-monthly basis (January, May and September) to provide detailed build plans at premises level. The purpose of this OMR is to ensure that we have the most up to date information about suppliers’ existing and planned build - in particular commercial build - over the next three year period with supplier submissions being used to inform eligibility across Project Gigabit^[1] and other public interventions.

This will support better strategic planning and prioritisation of procurement IAs, formalise the previous rolling OMR process and minimise the risk of the Scottish Government intervening in an area that would disrupt existing commercial plans. Data collected from the OMR is used to inform the current R100 Programme, Project Gigabit interventions and both Scottish and UK voucher schemes.

We invite suppliers to provide us with information about their broadband infrastructure within Scotland. For the OMR, the Scottish Government assesses wholesale broadband infrastructure with the capability to deliver superfast, ultrafast or gigabit broadband services. The Scottish Government follows Ofcoms distinction in the Wholesale Fixed Telecoms Market Review^[2] (WFTMR). WFTMR Volume 1, paragraph 2.32 and Volume 2, paragraph 3.9 make clear that, despite a convergence of underlying infrastructure technologies, broadband and leased line products remain sufficiently distinct for differing treatments. As such, public subsidy supports residential and business broadband networks, not Leased Line connections.

Forming the IAs will include taking information learned from publicly available supplier information about existing and planned build; feedback from potential suppliers about commercial attractiveness; information that we gather through this OMR and any subsequent Public Reviews that we may launch.

Through this OMR, working with suppliers, we aim to build and maintain a comprehensive dataset across Scotland. As part of the OMR we will ask participating suppliers to provide supporting evidence with their submission in the same way as they do for any other OMR, i.e. at the same time as their data submission via a Supporting Evidence Pack.

The OMR is used to update a Public Review Report where changes occur to the IAs. Where this is the case, we will publish an updated Public Review Report in line with the Open Market Review and Public Review Subsidy Control Classification Guidance document^[3].