BT has pledged to provide super-fast broadband to 34,000 more Scots by the end of the year.
BT announced that exchanges across the country will benefit from the company’s £2.5 billion roll-out of super-fast broadband.
Super-fast broadband uses “fibre to street cabinet” technology (FTTC) to provide faster download speeds of up to 40Mbps, potentially rising to 60Mbps, and upstream speeds of 10Mbps, which could rise to 15Mbps in the future.
BT’s local network business Openreach expects to make super-fast fibre broadband available to two thirds of the UK by the end of 2015.
Brendan Dick, director of BT Scotland, said, “The roll-out of super-fast broadband across Scotland is continuing to gather momentum.
“More than 215,000 homes and businesses either already have access to super-fast broadband, or will be joining the revolution in the months ahead.
“At a time of difficult economic conditions, super-fast broadband is being deployed in the UK at a faster pace than anywhere else in the world.
“BT is making one of the largest private sector investments in recent times and this is boosting the prosperity of Scotland, as well as transforming the internet for businesses and households.
“We want to make super-fast broadband available as widely as possible, but beyond our current commercial roll-out plans there are locations where we will need to work with the public sector to install the technology.
“We welcome the opportunity to talk to organisations such as local authorities about ensuring their communities are able to benefit as fully as possible.”
Earlier this week, business leaders called on the next Scottish Government to do more to ensure Scotland does not get left behind other parts of the UK as broadband speeds improve.
They claimed that faster speeds are necessary to ensure businesses are able to compete with firms elsewhere in the UK.
Super-fast broadband benefits include users being able to send and receive large amounts of data much more quickly and efficiently and having the ability to run multiple bandwidth-hungry applications at the same time.
A music track can be downloaded in about two seconds, a whole music album in 30 seconds and a feature length HD movie in 10 minutes.
Upload speeds are the fastest in the UK, allowing large videos and data files to be sent almost instantly and activities such as uploading high-resolution photos to social networking sites to be completed in seconds.
Photo used under a Creative Commons licence courtesy of Flickr user Gavin St. Ours.