The Scottish National Investment Bank is providing £20 million to help improve digital connections in rural communities and small towns.

The Bank’s support to Lothian Broadband Group (LBG) is on top of £5m from the company’s current shareholders.

It forms part of LBG’s plan to invest £75m to connect more than 70,000 premises in rural communities and small towns over the next four years.

Eilidh Mactaggart, chief executive of SNIB, said: “This investment will support the improvement of digital connectivity in rural and semi-rural areas of Scotland, helping to address inequality of access to digital infrastructure outside of our cities and major towns.”

LBG chief executive Gavin Rodgers said: “The backing of the Scottish National Investment Bank enables us to continue our rapid scale up.”

The Bank’s investment supports UK and Scottish government commitments to high-speed broadband access. The UK Government has a target of at least 85% of the population having access to gigabit (1,000 Mbps) broadband by 2025 under its National Infrastructure Strategy.