Broadband: Final Call for Highland Perthshire

Over the years monies have been drawn down from Europe by the bureaucrats in St Andrews house. These have been used, piecemeal, to help offset the costs of enabling some remote areas. They have been bestowed upon various parts of rural Scotland where determined residents have organised, lobbied, petitioned and squealed the loudest. There they have helped to address the mast, powerline and access difficulties faced by their local terrain limitations.

Other parts have waited in frustration, but suffered in silence in the queue in the expectation that their turn will come.Time’s up. The eurodosh is all but expired and the cupboard is bare of any substitute funds to replace it.The drones in Edinburgh have chosen to believe that the unsatisfied demand for broadband has been restricted to those localities that kicked up a fuss. The view from the capital is “just a bit more mopping up and - job done”.

Invisible Demand
But nothing could be further from the truth. Due to the work that has been done over the past five years+ working with really remote communities in Scotland, the Blair Atholl-based company RDS has been able to convey to the purse string holders something of the latent demand that really exists - and not in ‘wildly remote parts’ but slap bang here in Highland Perthshire.

As an instance of this it is calculated that over 100 existing households around Loch Tay are not - and are not likely to be - broadband enabled - because the infrastructure is not in place.

That figure would swell hugely if proper account was taken of the widely expanding housing, resort and accommodation development which is being encouraged for ‘tourism’ by the local authority, due to land coming out of agricultural use.

Readers will be able to identify similar patterns in all the parishes of the heartland area which will remain steadfastly bereft of a BB service.

“Who Needs It?”

Doubtless there are numbers of folk in these ‘unlit’ areas who are disinterested in, and do not use, computers.This might lead them to consider the extension of their telephony by BB connection to be irrelevant.If they pause a moment to consider: without the ability for a broadband service to link into in their immediate
neighbourhood, the future sale value of their present property will be impaired.Also, the investment for future housing or commercial development locally will be compromised by restricting the range of
intending buyers or business locators.For recreation, education, communication and even retailing, the need for access to the communication super highway is now
getting to be greater in our landward areas than even the need for a scaffy wagon service or a daily postal service. If that seems absurd then they should also consider this. Hardheaded research among households in areas currently unserved has measured the costs that families would be prepared to meet to receive broadband.

This shows that many would cheerfully meet single payment costs of between £60 and £200 for initial installation, and then pay £30 per month to acquire 2MB download capacity.

Current, and possible future, developers would be wise to note this housebuying preference.

They might also take note of the fact that the top ten jobs that will be in demand in 2010 did not exist in 2004.

How Is It Done?
The challenges set by the limitations of the country exchanges are addressed on a bespoke basis. Each ‘dark’ area has its own problems and there is not a one-size-fits-all solution - for had there been then BT and the government mandarins could have implemented it long ago.

By locating canny boosters and repeater masts, the ‘reach’ of the country telephone exchanges can be extended through a network that ‘lightens the darkness’ for most present - and much future - demand.

As an example, by linking the exchanges at Kenmore and Killin with just two such judiciously placed installations, one on each bank of Loch Tay, its whole 16 mile length on both flanks would be emancipated - and more besides, reaching for example into parts of Glen Lyon and down the Appin of Dull.

With this would also come bonus consequences. For, besides providing effective internet connection, there would be a powerful improvement upon the existing flakey telephone communications. In addition, visitors to Kenmore (for example) would be able to enjoy entirely free internet access with the use of their wi-fi laptop computers.

Indicative Costs
‘Sorting out’ Loch Tayside is estimated to need some £198,000. This might be sourced locally, or by bidding for a tranche of the £3m or so which is still held, till this year end, in Edinburgh coffers for these purposes.

Once the installation of the infrastructure that such a sum would buy is in place, then the first 100 to sign up could meet a one-off installation cost of around £50 and thereafter £29.99 per month for 2MB capacity.

Even latecomers to such a scheme would be able to ‘buy in’ to the system once established through an individual installation cost level of circa £250.Much the same would apply to any other ‘dark’ part of Highland Perthshire and could involve very much smaller sums of set-up money.

A Few Hoops...If, by the end of this year, addresses in Highland Perthshire that are currently unsupplied have not registered on the government official survey for broadband, then they will miss the boat for a future solution to the broadband scarcity.

There is only one way to register and that is ONLINE...not by mail, neither by phone, nor by any other means than via the Scottish Government website

Absurd though this may seem (for many of those without broadband at present are quite likely also to have no computer access), this online registration is the sole method for signing up.

For those falling into the above bracket, a willing friend, acquaintance or relative must be sought who will go online on their behalf to fill in the registration details. Alternatively this can be done at the nearest local authority library service or at an internet cafe.

A further - but easily surmountable - wrinkle is that registrants on the survey site must be contactable by telephone AND by email.

Thus they may have to acquire an email address and can do this, simply and without any cost, through hotmail, yahoo, gmail or tesco etc

On the government site, registrants will have to identify their name, correct postal address and postcode; their landline telephone number, email address and will also be asked to identify their telephone exchange and their local authority. They will be asked to indicate the reason that they have not received broadband.

Once signed up on the survey site, registrants can expect to be contacted by the government’s administrators (or their appointed procurement agent) who will then indicate the broadband options to be made available to them.