It is encouraging to learn the Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise are making good progress in widening access to high-speed broadband, but dismaying to read that this good news does not apply to the islands and remote areas.
In an update published today, Audit Scotland reports that, with 86 per cent of homes and businesses having access to fibre broadband by March this year, the Scottish Government is one per cent ahead of its original target. However, work has so far focused on “easier to reach” areas. Six rural or remote council areas are still waiting in digital limbo, leaving them roughly a world away from the world-class digital infrastructure that the Scottish Government has promised.
Of course, it is not the Scottish Government that is wearing the hard hat and supplying the fibre connections. That work was contracted to BT Openreach, at a cost of £412 million. Only last month, industry regulator Ofcom criticised the BT subsidiary’s poor service across the UK.
Now, in Scotland, Audit Scotland’s update raises fears that it is treating the islands and remote areas as an afterthought. This has long been the bugbear of such communities, which need good broadband connections to attract businesses and families but which, at times like these, find themselves lacking in digital progress. True, their geographical circumstances may be more challenging, and there may be numerical arguments for starting elsewhere.
But their case for good broadband connection is as strong, if not stronger, than anyone else’s, and it is perhaps time to challenge the supposition that remote must mean last.
In Scotland, infrastructure and urgency sometimes come across as concepts that have not yet been introduced, whether we consider the incomplete motorway between our two largest cities or patchy wi-fi on our trains. It’s time that, from the glens and archipelagoes to the city centres and conurbations, we brought ourselves up to speed.
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