Some 51,000 households in remote Scottish communities now have access to broadband, putting Scotland’s availability on a par with the rest of the UK.

A total of 99.8 per cent of the country now has access to broadband, following a £16.5m project led by the Scottish Executive, which has been working in partnership with BT.

The project is part of the Broadband for Scotland strategy which began in 2001, says Zahid Deen, the head of the Executive’s telecoms policy unit.

‘At that time only 43 per cent of Scotland had access to these kinds of services, 20 per cent behind the rest of the UK. We are now on a par with the rest of the country, with every community having access to broadband services,’ he said.

The project involved installing ADSL in a third of Scotland’s telephone exchanges, and is the largest project to provide broadband to rural areas carried out in the UK.

‘Because of how ADSL works there will still be a few people outside the enabled communities who will not be able to get broadband,’ said Deen. ‘But that is an issue with the technology rather than the coverage of the project,’ he added.