Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) has signed a landmark deal with BT to bring fibre broadband to remote areas of northern Scotland.

This has been described as the UKs most complex and challenging broadband project ever, due to the geography and disparate population of the Highlands and Islands. Estimates have indicated that, without public sector support, fewer than one in four properties would have fibre broadband via commercial rollout.

However, it is believed that the 146 million investment a combination of public and private sector money will bring fibre broadband to 84 percent of Highlands and Islands homes and businesses by the end of 2016.

Digital connectivity is essential to todays social and business activity. High-speed fibre broadband in the Highlands and Islands will make a real contribution to our communities prosperity, particularly for people in remote and rural areas, said Alex Paterson, Chief Executive of HIE.

It offers opportunities for new ways of working, innovation, enhanced public services, access to international markets and provides the infrastructure needed by business sectors like energy, life sciences, tourism and business services.

As part of the project, BT will build a fibre backbone with more than 800km of new fibre on land and install hundreds more kilometres of fibre access cable to hundreds of new street cabinets. Engineers will also lay around 400km of subsea cables over 19 crossings to remote islands.

The public sector investment towards the contract is 126.4 million, which will be delivered through the Scottish Government broadband fund and incorporate funding from Broadband Delivery UK (BDUK).

A further 12 million come from from HIEs own budget, and BT is investing an additional 19.4 million in the project, taking the total project value to around 146 million.

There are incredible obstacles to overcome, not least building a fibre network across some of the most rugged terrain in the UK. And we have huge distances to cover as we lay our cables over the hills and glens and under the sea, said Bill Murphy, BT Groups Managing Director of Next Generation Broadband.

The unprecedented scale of this project is such that it can only be done in partnership and all of us in BT are looking forward to continuing the great working relationship that weve built up over many years with Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

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Highlands and Islands gets £146m fibre broadband investment