Shetland will miss UK broadband targets

SHETLAND looks set to fall well behind the rest of the UK as the government ramps up spending on superfast broadband.

The UK government recently announced an additional £250 million on top of the £1.2 billion being spent on rolling out high speed connections to 90 per cent of the country by 2017.

However it looks like just 60 per cent of Shetland households and businesses are likely to receive download speeds of up to 30 megabits per second (mbps) within the next four years.

Now northern isles MP Alistair Carmichael is calling for early meetings with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to ensure Shetland gets a better deal on broadband.

Last week the National Audit Office declared that the government’s Broadband UK (BDUK) project to connect nine tenths of the country by May 2015 was hopelessly overambitious.

The target date has now been revised to March 2017, but the Highlands and Islands remain one of four areas unlikely to reach such levels of saturation.

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Shetland has been promised 75 per cent of the islands will be have fast connections, but these will largely be restricted to Lerwick, Brae, Scalloway and Sandwick.

Yet even that figure has been deemed over optimistic by Shetland Telecom, the council-owned internet service provider (ISP).

The company’s Guy Smith said only last month HIE could not say which parts of the islands would benefit from the new high speed network.

“Our belief is that it will be largely, if not entirely, the mainland of Shetland that receives it,” he said.

“There are some areas in the north and west that won’t get, it and the only island might be Yell.”

Smith said the 75 per cent figures was at best “misleading”, because those households would only be connected to an exchange capable of delivering fast broadband.

“People who live in somewhere like Sandwick and are reasonably close to the exchange will be able to upgrade to BT Infinity, which with a bit of luck might give them 30 meg download speeds.

“That would realistically be what about 50 to 60 per cent of Shetland will get, but they will mainly be in the main population centres.”

That will certainly not include most of the outer islands as no subsea cables are to be laid between them, unlike the western isles where 19 such connections are to be installed.

Communications giant BT have won all the government contracts to install BDUK infrastructure, raising concerns that they are only investing where they can expect the greatest return.

UK culture secretary Maria Miller has called a meeting of small scale ISPs to address the problem of connecting the final 10 per cent of addresses in the most remote areas.

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But with BT snapping up all the most easily accessibly locations, there are fears it will be too expensive for anyone to connect the rest of the country.

Meanwhile due to lack of funds Shetland Islands Council is holding back on its own policy commitment to roll out Shetland Telecom fibre optic connections to the whole of the isles, which is currently estimated to cost £5 million.

This week Alistair Carmichael MP said he would be pressing ministers and officials for details on how the extra £250 million will be spent.

“We need to know that it is sufficient both to do the work and to do it within the previously identified timescale,” he said. 


“I am wanting early meetings with all the bodies concerned, especially Highlands and Islands Enterprise to satisfy myself that they have the tools to do the job properly now.

“We have got to stop thinking of broadband and other connectivity issues as being some sort of luxury. It is as important to the future sustainability of our communities as having a supply of water or electricity.”

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