More than 80,000 homes and businesses across Aberdeenshire are now able to connect to high-speed fibre broadband.

The £428m Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband programme offers connection speeds up to 80Mbps.

More local coverage will follow as engineers from Openreach, Scotland's digital network business, continue work on the ground during the rest of the year.

Openreach Fibre Broadband Director Robert Thorburn said: "Thousands of people across Aberdeenshire now have the opportunity to access their best ever broadband speeds when they sign up with a service provider.

"There's lots of competition out there and people may find they could be surfing at much higher speeds at a similar cost to their current service.

"Once you've tried life in the internet fast lane, you'll never look back."

It comes after Aberdeen was announced to become the first city in Scotland to receive access to gigabit-speed broadband.

A £40m partnership between Vodafone and CityFibre is expected to go live by next year.