Broadband infrastructure in Scotland: public review

4. Purpose of this Public Review Request For Information

This PR defines the proposed eligible areas, as determined during the OMR, to enable all interested stakeholders (including the public, businesses, internet service providers and broadband infrastructure operators) to comment on those proposals.

As part of this PR, we will request and then evaluate any further responses in order to validate the eligibility of the premises for public subsidy. During the evaluation exercise, we may engage with suppliers further to discuss and confirm their coverage claims. Following this, we will be able to determine the premises to be included in procurements.

This PR will take place over the period of at least one calendar month, and once concluded will confirm the eligibility of premises for potential future procurements. The full details of any such procurements will follow the conclusion of this Public Review.

Order of processes:

1. OMR

2. Public Review

3. Determine intervention areas for procurement

4. Procurement

All meaningful responses to the PR will be carefully considered and where necessary, used to determine eligible premises. The final eligible area maps and a summary report confirming details of the changes will be published on the Scottish Government website after the close of the review period. The finalised eligible premises and proposed IA(s) will then be submitted to the UK Government’s National Competence Centre (NCC) for approval against the UK Subsidy Control Regime. The responses and output from the PR will therefore help us gain further confidence that any proposed interventions are in areas that are eligible for subsidy i.e. areas which are not commercially viable and require government intervention to address market failure. Data collected from the PR may be used to inform other publicly-funded programmes, including the Reaching 100% Programme, GigaHubs and UK Gigabit Voucher eligibility as well as support the development of other potential publicly-funded interventions. Supplier submissions may be used to inform eligibility across Project Gigabit^[7].