Around 69,500 more homes and businesses in 14 Scottish communities now have access to faster broadband, BT announced today.

They’re the latest places in the country to benefit from the roll-out of BT’s next generation broadband service delivered over copper lines.

The communities are: Dyce and Bieldside, Aberdeen; Peebles, Borders; Ardrossan, Ayrshire; Castle Douglas and Dalbeattie, Dumfries & Galloway; Milngavie, Dunbartonshire; Glenrothes North, Fife; Penicuik, Midlothian; Glenboig and Cambusnethan, North Lanarkshire; Lesmahagow and Strathaven, South Lanarkshire; and Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire.

The BT investment makes available download speeds of up to 20 megabits per second (Mbps) – more than double the speed previously available from BT.

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It is now available in more than 150 Scottish exchange areas and another 59 are earmarked for upgrades in the coming months. The new service is available on an open, wholesale basis to all companies providing broadband.

Brendan Dick, BT Scotland director, said: "This is an important step forward for Scotland. In these challenging economic times, faster broadband can help businesses become more competitive, find new customers and work more flexibly as well as greatly improving the online services available to families, homeworkers and other internet users.

"By the summer, around 72 per cent of Scotland’s homes and businesses – equivalent to more than 1.5 million premises – will be served by an exchange that has been upgraded to deliver these higher speeds."

This investment in the copper network is in addition to BT’s £2.5 billion roll-out of fibre-based broadband, which will bring even faster speeds to around two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014.

Brendan Dick added: "BT remains keen to work with the public sector to explore ways of bringing faster broadband to other areas which are geographically and commercially more challenging."

(GK)