Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands Paul Wheelhouse MSP was on hand for the ‘go live’ moment, which marked 58,300 homes and businesses being able to upgrade to faster fibre broadband through the £463 million Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband (DSSB) programme.
Kirkcolm’s latest broadband upgrade was only possible after engineers from Openreach, who have delivered the network on the ground, installed a remote fibre node to serve outlying properties on the road to Portencalzie.
Instead of taking fibre optic cable to a local street cabinet, the fibre runs all the way to a remote node located underground.
The node acts like a mini street cabinet to provide superfast broadband at speeds of up to 80Mbps.
Mr Wheelhouse said: “It is particularly pleasing to see that these final few premises in Kirkcolm, deep in rural Dumfries and Galloway, can now get reliable, fast broadband thanks to the DSSB programme.
“The difference having fibre broadband can make to businesses or to improving the range of services available in the home is amazing.
“More than 65 per cent of properties reached by the programme have now switched to faster fibre broadband.”
And fibre infrastructure build director at Openreach Andrew Hepburn said: “It’s great to be here in Kirkcolm as we near the end of a massive, seven-year civil engineering journey that’s seen our engineers bring better broadband to thousands of communities from Shetland to Gretna Green.
“Good connectivity has the power to revitalise our rural areas.
“There have been many highlights along the way and engineers have overcome numerous challenges to reach as many people as possible.
“Now we’re ready to get cracking on the next stage – as the Scottish Government’s R100 programme brings gigabit-capable full fibre to thousands of Dumfries and Galloway’s hardest-to-reach homes.”
